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GOD “AN D> MEAN: 


CONFERENCES 


DELIVERED AT NOTRE DAME IN PARIS, 


BY ‘THe 


A ' 
ff 


f 


Riv PERE LACORDAIRG 


OF THE ORDER OF FRIAR-PREACHERS 


Translated from the French, wrth the Author's permission, by a 
Tertiary of the same Order. 


NEW VOR Ke 
SCRIBNER, WELFORD AND ARMSTRONG. 


roy. 


iat i ci 
Ae é 


TO 
THE CHEVALIER TELLES JORDAO, 
A TRIBUTE OF ESTEEM AND AFFECTION 
FROM 
THE TRANSLATOR, 


H, Dek. 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/godmanconferenceO0Olaco 


TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. 
a 


a. ENCOURAGED by the reception given to the Con- 
ferences on JESUS CHRIST and Gop, the translator 

_ offers another volume of the great Dominican’s works, 

# anticipating the pleasure of publishing the whole 


series in the same form. 


Laster Week, 1872. 


es 


DECLARATION. 
~~ 


ALTHOUGH I have constantly taught under the 
authority and in presence of the Archbishop of Paris, 
and my doctrine has never been criticised or called in 
question by them; although that same doctrine, 


published by the press, has excited neither reproach 


~ nor discussion, yet, lest in treating so many theological 
X 


questions some involuntary error may have escaped 
me, and this I must and do readily presume from my 
weakness, I declare that I submit my Conferences to 
the Catholic Church, whose son I am; and, in 
particular, to the Holy Roman Church, the mother 
and mistress of all Churches, wherein resides the 
plenitude of the authority founded upon earth by our 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

I also declare that I do not acknowledge the 
pretended reproductions of my Conferences which 


have been made by various periodicals, whatever be 


Vill Declaration. 


their form or name. I once more protest against that 
violation of literary rights whose result is to place 
under the name of a preacher, discourses imperfectly 
reported amidst an immense auditory, and no less 
imperfectly corrected by the authors of such specu- 
lations. Should the doctrine contained in these 
publications be attacked, I decline the responsibility 
thereof as of a work which is not mine, and for 
which I can be held accountable only by a violation 


of all right and equity. 


FR. HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE, 
Prov. des Fr. Précheurs. 


Nancy, at the Convent of Notre-Dame-du-Chéne, 


the 15th October, 1851. 


CONTENTS. 


———<4—___ 


The Supernatural Intercourse between God and Man : 3 
Two Objections against the Supernatural Intercourse 

between God and Man F ; : q : s 13g 
The Need of Supernatural Intercourse between God and 

Man : : : : . : : : Macs, Se pees 
Prophecy : ‘ : 
Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. : F <l peenes 
‘The Human Act corresponding to Prophecy. : « 183 


sacrament . 7 , ; : P , F i bak ZL 


‘a 


wets 
aes 


eats 
es 


GOD AND MAN. 


THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN 
GOD AND MAN. 


My Lorp,!1—GEnTLEMEN, . . 

We will begin by establishing the point we have 
reached in expounding the mystery of destinies, as 
it is professed by Catholic doctrine. According to 
that doctrine, there exists an infinite, eternal Being, 
subsisting of himself, who is one without being alone; 
for he finds in his own essence relations whence, with 
the necessary movement of his life, results the absolute 
plenitude of his perfection and his happiness. A 
Being unique and complete, God suffices to himself, 
No necessity, no utility called him out of himself mae 
saw in his intelligence the inexhaustible image of a 
multitude of beings variously limited ; he felt his 


power to cause them to pass from the possible to the — 


1 MONSEIGNEUR SIBouR, Archbishop of Paris. 
B 


4 The Supernatural Intercourse between 


real state; but being perfect and happy in the inner 
development of his triple personality, he was free not 
to exercise his power, and, in the depth of his mind, 
to leave in repose the eternal spectacle of the worlds 
which were not. Goodness alone incited him gratui- 
tously to communicate life ; and therefore, on the day 
when it pleased him, or rather in that indivisible day 
which has no distinct moments save for the passing 
beings who behold ‘it, God created the universe. He 
created it so as to realize the indefinite perspective of 
the possible, as he beheld it in his intelligence, and 
man, who in his double nature drew together all its 
elements and all its features, was placed in the centre 
of that work, as its connecting link, and its most com- 
plete representation. God is thus the principle of 
things. But by the same reason which determined 
him to be the principle of things, he is also their end— 
that is to say, their term or object. For, having created 
from goodness, he willed to communicate his own 
perfection and beatitude to his creatures, and this can 
be accomplished only by the intimate union of their 
life with his own. Whence it follows that the general 
law of all created beings is to aspire towards God— 
minds, by a free and direct effort; bodies, by their 


association with minds in the person of man. And in 


God and Man. 5 


order for that ascension of the finite towards the in- 
finite to be possible, on the very day of their creation, 
God, the author of intelligent beings, gave to them 
truth and love—truth, to know him ; love, to love him— 
and the Father of beings became altogether and at the 
Same moment their principle, their means, and their end. 

Such is the first plan of Catholic doctrine, and the 
first plan of our destinies, 

But is this all? Has God, in order to attract us 
towards him, limited himself to spreading out before 
us the spectacle of nature, and to lighting up in our 
intelligence the sun of reason? Is: all other’ com- 
munication between himself and us—communication 
more direct, nearer, more profound — impossible P 
Have we nothing more to hope for or pretend 
to, until the day when the mystery of our creation 
will be consummated in eternity? Rationalism 
affirms this; it declares—and this it is which sepa- 
rates it from us in the very fount of its essence— 
that there is no communication between God and 
ourselves, save by the intermediary of reason, that 
every other other mode is chimerical, all other inter- 
course an imposture or an illusion. Catholic doctrine 
does not accept this decision—it believes, it teaches - 
that nature and reason form but the peristyle of truth, 


R 2 


6 The Supernatural Intercourse between 


the first torch of the temple, and that man, with this 
help alone, however great he may be, is an incomplete 
being, who would be incapable of attaining the term 
of his destinies—that is to say, God. Behold the 
formidable question now before us. All that I said to 
you last year of the Christian dogmas contains in itself 
only a spiritualist philosophy ; there are sages who: 
bend with respect before that portion of religious truth, 
and if we did not advance further, we should remain 
within the limits of human wisdom. Catholic doctrine 
does not permit us to do this; it constrains us to pass 
these narrow limits, and to show you that beyond and 
besides the creating act to which we owe the elements 
of life, knowledge, and love, which are within us, there 
exists in regard to us an action of God more pene- 
trating and more profound. What is that action ? 
Does it exist in reality? This is what we must now 


endeavour to learn. 


My Lorp, 

You are the third archbishop of Paris before whom 
I have here announced the word of God. Your two 
last predecessors were both struck by the thunderbolt; 
they both prematurely carried to God the account full 


and yet incomplete of their episcopacy. One of them 


God and Man. 4 


saw his palace rased to the ground by the hands of 
the multitude, and, after having responded to that act 
of violence by ten years of good deeds, he died without 
having obtained from the justice of men the reparation 
due to his piety, his courage, and his goodness. The 
other offered himself as a holocaust; he fell in dis- 
arming civil war, and the people, moved by that 
victim who had ‘become their peacemaker, brought 
him back into this temple, and made here for him 
a sepulchre greater than his throne, and a resurrection 
as glorious as his death.. God has chosen you, my 
Lord, to succeed these two men, and to continue the 
history of the See of St. Denis ; he has considered you 
worthy to occupy a place which henceforth can only be 
filled by the charity that makes the martyr, and the 
greatness of soul that makes the citizen, I wish you 
happier days than theirs, a glory less agitated, and an 
end less precocious—not that I doubt of your heart, 
should God call you to equal them in the peril and 
honour of tribulations, but because it belongs only to 
God to desire for men, and send to them, tribulations 


as great as their virtues, 


GENTLEMEN, 


I shall not render an account to you of my public 


8 The Supernatural Lntercourse between 


acts in the memorable year which has just closed upon 
us. Time perhaps has taken upon itself to explain. 
and ratify them—I shall not say more to you than 
time. My mission is not to speak to you of myself, 
but to speak to you of God, and of yourselves in 
your relations with God. This is the mountain upon 
which I have placed my life, and upon which I would. 
place yours. Let us ascend it together, and from 
this height, which surveys time and the passions of 
men, let us proclaim to earth the only truths which 
are able to save it. 

Since God is the end of man, since he has created 
us to be perfect and happy in him, it is manifest that 
if the designs of the creation have not here below been 
entirely frustrated, there should be found men who: 
tend to their end in seeking and loving God. And 
nevertheless, because of human liberty, there should 
also be found other men who neglect God, their 
principle and their end, and yield to the seduction of 
created things. Such indeed is the spectacle which 
the history of the world unceasingly presents to us, 
At whatever epoch it is consulted or regarded it will 
be found struggling with the two great parties which 
contend for the government of minds—the party of God 


and that of man—the party of saints and that of sages. 


God and Man. 9 


Now, if it be true that we have no other means for 
arriving at our divine end than nature and reason, it 
is manifest that the party of God should take its basis 
in the sole resources of the natural order. And yet it 
is not so. The party of God exists, it has always 
existed, it is endowed with a force which none other 
has been able to destroy—neither ages, nor kings, nor 
sages. Ages have come with the empire and stratagems 
of duration; the party of God has seen them pass 
away, and has made use of them but to outlive them. 
Kings have held in their hands all the power of man ; 
the party of God has blessed or cursed their passage, 
and in the one, as in the other case, has covered their 
head with earth and remained living. Sages have 
written books, and made names for themselves ; the 
party of God has taken possession of their books, and 
now that their renown is but a fruitless remembrance, 
it still uses their ashes to ensure its immortality. And 
whence, amidst general decay, does this persevering 
and victorious party derive its imperturbable life ? 
I have said that it is not from nature and reason. 
Doubtless it acknowledges their nghts, it employs 
them to its own profit, but as principles which have 
no elevation corresponding to the greatness of our 


destinies, and which form but the dawn of a more 


10 Lhe Supernatural Intercourse between 


perfect day. Its force, it declares, is in a doctrine 
which does not come from nature, and which dis- 
concerts reason. It is there, from that mysterious 
fount, that the party of God derives the light which 
guides it, the virtue which purifies it, the courage 
which raises it above the persecutions of time. This 


it does not hide, it is its glory and its boast. 


If we now, on the contrary, consider the other party—_ 


the party of man-—and seek to know the basis of its 
convictions and its acts, it is no more hidden from us 
than the other; it boldly declares to us that there is 
no other science than that of nature, no other truth 
than that of which reason is the principle, the seat, 
and the demonstration. ‘That if beyond the universe 
there exists an invisible Being, freed from the limits in 
which all beings are retained, the party of man pre- 
tends to have no idea of him save by the inner revela- 
tion of the mind, or by the conclusion to be drawn 
from the phenomena of the world. But whether it 
admit or reject the existence of that superior Being, 
the party of man holds no real intercourse with him. 
Those among the sages, who, like Plato, have left a 
religious memory, were all penetrated with serious 
respect for the vestiges of a tradition whose history 


they ignored. ‘They avowed the infirmity of human 


God and Man. II 


thought left to its own resources, and endeavoured to 
raise themselves towards God by the irrational effort 
of prayer. ‘They belonged to the party of saints by 
desire, to the party of sages by ignorance. 

Behold the fact; wherever God is adored, he is 
adored in virtue of a supernatural doctrine ; wherever 
he is despised, he is despised in the name of nature 
and reason. However strange the result may be, it is 
not possible to deny it. Turn your eyes whither you 
will, enter into whatever temple you please, you will 
find there on the very threshold Prophecy and Sacra- 
ment ; prophecy—a word of God containing truths 
inaccessible to reason; sacrament—an act endowed 
by God with an efficacy superior to all the forces of 
nature. And you will see that whoever despises these 
two things, infallibly bends towards earth, knowing 
nothing of God but his name, and holding with him 
no other relations than ingratitude and forgetfulness. 

Again, behold the fact. But what must we conclude 
therefrom? We must conclude that the intercourse 
between man and God is not founded upon the purely 
natural order, but upon an order more intimate and 
more profound, which places human personality and 
the divine personality in direct contact. If you refuse - 


to draw this conclusion, you are free to do so, but 


12 The Supernatural Intercourse between 


learn that you thereby destroy all intercourse between 
man and God, since in reality there exists none other 
upon earth. Perhaps you will say it is of little import- 
ance to you, and that your opinion is precisely that this 
intercourse is no other thing than an imposture or an 
illusion. 

Here the question changes its face. Itis no longer 
a question of knowing what is really, in mankind, the 
mode of its religious acts, but what is the logical value 
of those acts, as the human race performs them. I 
say the human race, and I ought first to establish this 
in order to give a basis to my argument. Is mankind 
religious? Is mankind religious under the supernatural 
form P 

It seems impossible to pretend that mankind is 
religious, since I have myself confessed that it is 
divided into two parties—the party of God, and the 
party of man—the party of faith, and that of unbelief. 
But it is easy to see that this division, all real though it 
be, does not destroy the universality and perpetuity of 
religious worship among men, and therefore does not 
deprive us of the right of affirming that mankind is 
religious. In fact, whilst no people appears in history 
without the sign and palladium of a positive faith, 


without temple, altar, priesthood—that is to say, without 


God and Maz. ts 


a constituted religion — unbelief appears only under 
an individual form, sometimes proscribed, sometimes 
tolerated, seldom powerful, and never becoming estab- 
lished as the public and social expression of a nation. 
Far from attaining a character of universality, unbelief 
does not even acquire the honour of nationality ; it 
leagues man to man, like a venom which inoculates 
itself, and which, were it even to become a plague, 
would still remain, in regard to its expansion, in the 
state of accident and scourge. There are considerable 
portions of mankind which have never known it ; such 
is the East. There, under a glowing sky, man more 
naturally raises his eyes towards the invisible sphere 
inhabited by God ; he believes, he prays, he adores, he 
contemplates, so to say, without thinking of what he 
does; and doubt or unbelief, if they enter into his 
mind, leave there rather the trace of a dream than of 
a temptation. 

It is the same with epochs as with nations. Epochs, 
taken in their suite, are religious. If certain periods 
form exceptions—that is to say, present a greater 
number of individual apostacies—they are periods of 
decadency which, in performing their painful and cor- 
rupt cycle, soon bring back from the depths of eternity, 


with younger days, more respected faiths. And as 


14 Lhe Supernatural Intercourse between 


there are races to whom irreligion is unknown, there 


are also epochs in which this mystery of iniquity has 
not even a name. Such were the first centuries of the 
Roman Republic; such was that memorable epoch 
when Christianity, having accomplished the baptism 
of Europe, held its ardent nations under the sceptre 
of a still unanimous faith. 

Whether, then, we consider mankind in the numerous 
nations which form its total body, or whether we 
regard it in its secular development, incredulity 
shows itself only in the state of protestation, with the 
weakness of isolation even in number; with the power- 
lessness of attaining perpetuity even in duration ; and, 
in his heart and his history, man remains in the eyes 
of all, a religious being. 

But under what form is he a religious being? Nothing 
assuredly is more yaried than the spectacle of the 
religions which fill the earth. They differ in doctrine, 
in morals, in ceremonies, in priesthoods, in their aver- 
sions, and it seems impossible, in whatever light we 
may regard them, to bring them together into one 
common architecture. And yet there is not one among 
them which, in regard to form, has not the same start- 
ing-point and the same constitution. All require their 


proselytes to bend with the respect and obedience of 


Ged and Man. 15 


faith before a sacred dogma—that is to say, before a 
doctrine descended from God by an inspired or a 
prophetic revelation. Whilst science starts from the 
observation of nature, and philosophy from the inves- 
tigation of reason, in all times and places religion 
invokes prophecy—that is to say, the word of God, 
communicated first to an envoy, next transmitted by 
tradition to the lips of the priest, who delivers it as he 
received it, as an inviolable heritage from on high. 
The man of science, the philosopher, and the priest, 
are the organs of a threefold teaching, whose lights 
might aid one another by mutual reflection, but which 
have all their own principle and their incommunicable 
character. None will ever be deceived in this. The 
man of science verifies, the philosopher reasons, the 
priest affirms in the name of God. And thus the very 
definition of these three kinds of men shows to us, 
that all worship is founded upon a prophecy, whether 
the author were really inspired by God, or whether he 
may have usurped, by a culpable imitation, the title 
and the power of prophecy. We shall soon see the 
means of discerning the true or the false in a matter 
where imposture has such grave consequences ; but 
here the imposture itself proves the truth which I wish 


to establish. For, I ask, why invent falsehood in the 


16 The Supernatural Intercourse between 


name of God, if the name of God, called in testimony | 


of the dogma, were not necessary to the life of all 
religion ? 

Thus as each nation preserves the memory of the 
legislator or conqueror who was its founder, each 
worship, true or false, has consecrated the history of 
the prophet who brought to it from heaven the word 
of God. ‘Christians name Jesus Christ; the Jews, 
. Moses; the Persians, Zoroaster; the Hindoos, Buddha ; 
the Mussulmans, Mahomet ; and if there are forms of 
worship which do not personally know their divine 
founder, that ignorance arises because they are, like 
the polytheism of the Greeks and the Romans, only a 
confused corruption of anterior systems. 

See, then,.that all religions—that is to say, mankind 
itself inasmuch as it is religious—confess that the 
intercourse between man and God reposes upon truths 
of another order than that of reason, upon a light 
different and more elevated than that which naturally 
enlightens created intelligences. This is not all; by 
the side of prophecy, that universal and perpetual 
torch by which faith is enlightened, sacrament, another 
institution reputed divine, imposes and manifests itself 
—an institution whose object is the purification, the 


elevation, the sanctification of the soul ; its union with 


God and Man. 17 


God, by a virtue which surpasses and astonishes the 
powers of nature. You who listen to me are the 
children of sacrament. Almost as soon as you drew 
the breath of life, before your eyes were opened to the 
light, before you thought, desired, or demanded any 
thing, those who loved you, being full of anxious soli- 
citude for you, took you from the first watchings of a 
mother, to bear you to the vast and solemn shade of 
a mysterious place. A man appeared, he poured water 
upon your head, and pronounced a few words; he 
commanded the evil spirit to go out of you ; he entered 
into your soul to eradicate evil therefrom and sow the 
seeds of good ; he gave you his faith and that of your 
fathers, an infinite hope, a love which the united beauty 
of all creatures would not have been capable of impart- 
ing to you; he drew you from the limits of nature and 
the obscurities of reason ; he made you living members 
of an invisible community ; sons and co-heirs of God, 
worthy of hearing and repeating his name, of contem- 
plating his works, of finding them too limited for you, 
and of aspiring, in fine, to his eternity as to your natural 
and true country. All this was done for you without 
your concurrence. Your friends were in haste, they 
feared lest a single day might deprive you of the benefit 


of that incomprehensible action, and had it been neces- 


18 The Supernatural Intercourse between 


sary to choose between your present death and your 
future life, those who loved you most, and who loved 
you the first—your mother even—would not have 
hesitated to lose you in your birth, provided you bore 
away with you the sign of the cross in the symbol of 
water. You may now despise these gifts ; but whatever 
your will may be, you have received them ; whatever 
you may do, they exist, and the faith of three hundred 
millions of souls, based upon the faith of a hundred 
generations, affirms to you, that the consecration of 
your baptism is of an immortality against which no 
revolt has any power or effect. 

I pass over the other sacraments of Christianity ; 
you all know them, and none of you doubt that they 
are an essential part of the religion of Christ—the 
means which it offers to raise us from earth to heaven. 
But is it the same in other religions? Is sacrament 
everywhere the inviolable mode of communication 
between man and God? Yes, amongst all; from the 
sacred forests of Scandinavia to the grotesque pagodas 
‘of China ; from the stone of the Druids to the altar of 
Greece ; from the most modern periods to the most 
remote ages—in all times and places, worship is sacra- 
mental as dogma is prophetic. Sacrifices, lustral 


waters, expiations, initiations, bloody or joyous rites— 


God and Man. Ig 


these have formed the life of all liturgies and the 
function of all priesthoods. One single worship, that 
of Mahomet, has appeared sparing in this regard, 
because it is scarcely anything but a form of deism 
clothed in revelation, and yet Mahomet preserved the 
vestige of sacrifice when he made prayer the practical 
foundation of his religious edifice. Now, prayer itself 
1s a sacrament, when it is supposed to possess a power 
of impetration which evidently surpasses the character 
of a natural act. 

Instead, then, of supposing that morals should be 
the sole and true means of uniting us to God, if we 
consult only the light of reason, we see that, in order to 
obtain that supreme object, all religions present to us 
Strange operations whose virtue lies solely in the will 
which institutes them ; and as reason is subordinate to 
faith in the mental order, morals are subordinate to 
sacrament in the order of the will. Not that faith 
should destroy reason, or sacrament morals, but on the 
contrary faith 1s given to increase reason, and sacra- 
ment to perfect morals. Now, the more extraordinary 
this result is, the more its universality and its per- 
petuity, so far from inspiring us with sterile astonish- 
ment, merit from us profitable and_ respectful 


_consideration. 


Qa 


20 Lhe Supernatural Intercourse between 


Therefore I beg you to remark that prophecy and 
sacrament are not secret works, hidden in the depths 
of sanctuaries and revealed only to the: initiated, but 
that both stand forth with the boldness of faith, and 
are both public like religion. 

Now, publicity is not a slight thing, and, above all, 
publicity which is universal and perpetual. Better 
than in any other age, you are now able to judge how 
formidable is its trial, since we are surrounded by the 
ruins which it produces daily, and by which it replies 
to the audacity of those who affront it with so much 
the less reflection, as there has never been in the world 
less of self-distrust and more facility for speaking 
boldly and without restraint, than now. Formerly, 
when a man, endowed with the highest intellectual 
gifts—Pythagoras, for instance—believed that’ he had 
received from heaven an idea useful to the happiness 
of human beings, he was somewhat alarmed: for a 
long time he carefully considered it within himself, 
then, uncertain of his own genius, he sent from sanc- 
tuary to sanctuary to interrogate the sacerdotal orders, 
famous by their tradition, the sciences, sd/vered by age, 
according to the expression of Plato, and, after years 
nourished with those divine intercourses, he hardly 


felt entitled to open his lips and teach in his turn. 


God and Man. af 


He did not dare to deliver to the world the fruit of 
his long meditations, but only to a few disciples, 
proving himself with them in abstinences, fastings, 
and all the austerities of a life of seclusion from men. 
Therefore glory, at least, rewarded this respect for 
truth ; the name of Pythagoras lived if his doctrine 
did not survive. It is far otherwise in our age—the 
youngest of our contemporaries is not afraid, as soon 
as he discovers an idea in his mind, to deliver it to 
the wind of publicity ; he speaks, he writes, he prints, 
he is dissatisfied if in eight days his idea has not 
made the tour of Europe. Publicity obeys him; it 
bears from the west to the east the light sheet which 
an intrepid conscience has confided to it, but on the 
morrow it brings back, even more quickly, silence 
and forgetfulness. Mystery would have protected it, 
publicity destroys it. It is true that publicity is the 
high road of great men; but it does not suffice to 
follow a high road, it must be followed to the end, 
and nothing is more difficult or more rare, to judge by 
tle spectacle which we witness. Our age is the age 
of high roads, but they are short. 

It is in fact, because publicity involves an immense 
confronting of the idea with all minds, rights, interests, 


institutions, acquired truths, settled customs—with all 


2 


22 Lhe Supernatural Intercourse between 


that passes in space and time. It is a contest of the 
new against the old—of progress against stability, and 
reciprocally of the old against the new, of stability 
against progress; a terrible and a daily struggle 
wherein it is impossible for that which is vain long to 
resist. This is why, even now, error seeks its empire 
in the shade of secrecy. You think, perhaps, that 
the peril of the nineteenth century is in unbridled 
publicity, and it is true that this publicity occasions 
many evils, but they are not comparable to those 
formed in the invisible conspiracies of thought. Day 
is but the reflex of night, publicity is but the echo of 
silence. Before the thunder escapes from the mouth 
of the volcano, it has furrowed underground the 
courses whence it derives its energy. If Europe 
trembles, it is not because it speaks, but because it 
has long been silent in the gloom of secret societies. 
Now is the hour of judgment, for it is the hour of 
publicity. Doctrines must appear before the tribunal 
of the human mind and of historical experience ; they 
must cast away the charm of the unknown and the 
evils of hypocrisy, they must answer every question, 
satisfy every want, be in open struggle with the in- 
constancy of mankind. Therefore, young as you are, 


of how many of them have you not already seen the 


Godt and Man. 2 


end? How many more will die before your own 
mortality will snatch you away from this scene of 
powerlessness and change? This is painful to witness, 
but at least we learn therefrom the vanity of error 
before the test of discussion and duration. 

Admire, then, with me, in the sacramental and 
prophetic institution, a publicity of sixty centuries. 
The temples were open, the smoke of sacrifice rose 
freely towards heaven, the blood and the water flowed 
upon the brow of the faithful in face of the un- 
believer, the world beheld and still beholds. N othing 
was hidden, nothing is now hidden from it. See, 
there is the baptismal font; there, the spot where 
faith kneels avowing and repairing its faults; there, 
the tabernacle in which, under the appearance of 
bread, the living flesh of a God reposes: and you 
hear the word which reveals and animates all these 
things, it does not flee from you, it stands before you, 
urges you, commands you in the name of God. You 
may laugh, it is permitted to you, or you may smite 
your breast, for you are able to do so. But whether 
you respond by insult or adoration, prophecy subsists, 
sacrament perseveres ; to-morrow you may die, and 
to-morrow they will seal your tomb. Is it not needful 


for you to think of it? Is it not needful for you 


24. Lhe Supernatural Intercourse between 


to know whence that strange institution derives a 
duration equal to its publicity—duration throughout 
all ages before publicity throughout all times? 

And yet publicity is not the last character by which 
we may judge of the part which prophecy and sacra- 
ment play in mankind. If mankind has destinies 
which have God for their end, it has also those which 
have nature for their horizon ; if, by its relation with 
God, it forms a divine society; it forms, during its 
sojourn here below, a purely human society. Between 
these two societies, so different in their object, mode, 
and end, it would seem that there should exist no point 
of contact, or at least that the supernatural means of 
the one should be foreign to the natural effects of the 
other. It isnot so. Prophecy and sacrament, which 
form the basis of religion, form also the basis of civil 
society. Such has been the estimation of all nations, 
since all have aggregated religion under one form or 
another to their public acts, and have venerated in 
the priesthood one of the principal instruments of the 
stability of empires. The priest, the warrior, the 
magistrate, have always been the three pillars of 
human society—the magistrate by justice, the warrior 
by the sword, the priest by the prophecy and sacra- 


ment, of which he is the living incarnation. Not that 


God and Man. 25 


< 


many other offices do not contribute to the stability as 
to the movement of social order; all even, whatever 
they may be, hold an honourable part there; but 
honour has its hierarchy as well as all the rest, and it 
is assuredly remarkable, not to say marvellous, that 
among so many human administrations, whose utility 
and glory are not questioned, the supernatural minis- 
tration of the priest should have obtained from 
nations so exalted a place in the organization of their 
temporal life. Even now, when, for the first time, the 
idea of separating divine and human things is intro- 
duced, it is not thereby intended that religion should 
be banished from national affairs and interests, but 
only that it should act upon them by an action more 
independent of their outward operations. In this 
position it has lost nothing of its social influence, it is 
not less the recognised soul of actual civilization, and 
perhaps there has rarely been an epoch in which its 
necessity as a principle of the human order was more 
powerfully felt. What ruins surround us? For sixty 
years, what has not the hand of France touched in 
order to destroy? What has it left standing? What 
is there which it has not at least wounded? Venera- 
tion has flown away from kings; neither war nor 


hereditary inheritance, nor the choice of revolutions, 


26 The Supernatural Intercourse between 


has been able to create a monarchy for us ; we over- 
throw thrones without having the faith of the republican 
ages ; we are wanting even in respect for our own 
works, and we have no longer strength save to disturb 
our ruins. I am wrong, something has remained 
great and honoured in this shipwreck of all institu- 
tions—the magistrate under his toga, the soldier under 
his banner, the priest in his temple. These remain 
to us, and because they remain, all is still saved. 

What more is required in order to conclude with 
certainty that prophecy and sacrament have penetrated 
even to the root of the life of mankind, and thence 
that mankind is religious under the supernatural 
form? I do not think you can contest the fact; 
you can but reject its consequences, and those very 
consequences I am about to establish. 

Already more than once in the course of our con- 
ferences, I have called your attention to the logical 
importance of every establishment which bears in itself 
the characters of universality, perpetuity, publicity, 
and organization. We shall find these significative 
characters in the prophetic and sacramental establish- 
ment, but with a new force which they derive from 
the very essence of prophecy and sacrament. For 


whilst the other institutions in which they are generally 


God and Man. 27. 


found proceed from the wants and faculties of man 
—that is to say, from the natural constitution of his 
being—-here we can no longer explain their presence 
by that motive, since prophecy and sacrament belong 
to an order which confounds rather than satisfies 
human nature. We willingly understand that man- 
kind may be religious ; reason announces to us the 
existence of a Supreme Cause, to which we owe all 
that we are, from which alone we can hope for all that 
we need, and religion, being no other thing than an 
intercourse of dependence, gratitude, and love, with 
that Supreme Cause, it is easy for an upright heart to 
conceive its justice and to follow the inner attraction 
to it. But outside of this circle, reason only meets with 
abysses, or at least it discovers nothing in its own 
light that opens to it another mode of knowing, loving, 
and adoring God. Consequently it is not reason that 
urges mankind towards that other mode; it is not 
reason that opens before us the obscure career wherein 
priesthoods have led all nations: and all times. 
Nothing is produced save by a principle of impulsion, 
no impulsion is given save in conformity with the 
spirit whence it emanates. Reason might create a 
worship of reason; it could not create a worship of 


which it possessed no element whatever. 


28 Lhe Supernatural Intercourse betiveen 


But it is still more remarkable that in no age or 
place has reason ever created a rational worship. In 
all times and places, prophetic and sacramental worship 
has stifled rational worship and hindered its pro- 
duction. If this worship has existed in certain hearts, 
such as those of Pythagoras and Plato, it remained 
there uncertain of itself, in the state of an aspiration 
which vainly seeks to define itself—an incomplete and 
painful state, which drew from the greatest of sages 
that confession so often cited: “It is needful that a 
master should descend from heaven to instruct us.” 

How then should reason, incapable of forming a 
worship for itself, have led all mankind to a form of 
religion of which it had neither consciousness nor 
intelligencé? And if reason be not the author of 
that religious form, who then is its author? Who 
has been powerful enough to impose it upon the 
human race? You will, perhaps, say—Man is 
made for God; he feels it, he knows it; he is so 
straightened upon this earth, which affords him but a 
poor and transitory shelter; by the natural impulsion of 
all his faculties, he aspires towards the infinite region, 
which is the term of his destiny. But he does not 
clearly know that term where he is waited for, he 


has a presentiment rather than knowledge of it; and, 


a” 


God and Man. 29 


by the combined effect of what he desires and what 
he ignores, in order to attain to God, he creates for 
himself means which reassure him in his faith and 
console him in his desire. He believes that God 
speaks to him; he supposes that certain acts per- 
formed in his name receive in that sublime invoca- 
tion an efficacy which nature alone cannot impart to 
anything. Prophecy is the dream of a truth, sacra- 
ment is the error of a hope. In the intercourse 
between a limited being and an infinite being, the 
impossible becomes natural, and extravagance seems 
to be an effort of reason. 

Lucretius invoked fear as the creator of the gods 
and of their worship ; you appeal to better sentiments 
in order to explain this mystery ; and, Indeed; ite 
were a question only of individual or local practices, 
we might, perhaps, consider positive religions as an 
aberration, more or less excusable, of religious senti- 
ments. But that aberration, whatever may be the 
influence which caused it, and the names by which it 
has been distinguished, could not become the law of 
mankind. It is mankind that believes in prophecy 
and sacrament—mankind, without exception, that has 
submitted to dogmas of which the mind has no evi-. 


dence, and to rights of which reason does not accept 


30) =6Lhe Supernatural Intercourse between 


the concurrence ; it is mankind, in its eminent nations 
as in its degenerate races, in its ages of civilization as 
in its ages of barbarism, in its sages as well as in its 
simple-hearted. It is impossible that all mankind has, 
in regard to God, suffered so persisting an eclipse of 
its true and natural light; it is impossible that God 
should have permitted this. Truth is the highest good 
we have received from his equitable beneficence—it is 
in all things the principle of our perfection and _beati- 
tude—we cannot lose it, without losing the root of 
all the divine gifts. And you would say that it is God 
himself, his acts, his memory, his rights over us, which 
have become the corrupted source of an universal and 
inveterate superstition !—that mathematical truth shall 
have been preserved, and religious truth shall have 
disappeared from the earth! Doubtless, human 
liberty has produced errors of every kind; but, 
besides that they have never universally destroyed 
anything necessary to the life of the human race, 
they still preserve traces of truth. We recognise in 
them the source from which the passions of men were 
turned aside, and its own inability to create even an 
error. Error is but a deviation from the true, an adul- 
teration of the natural order of things, which cannot 


be totally destroyed or changed, except by God. 


God and Man. BI 


Now an universal error is here supposed which, 
however, would have had no root in the physical, 
intellectual, and moral constitution of man. Accord- 
ing to that constitution, as rationalism supposes it, 
man includes no element superior to reason—reason is 
the most elevated point of his being, the principle and 
moderator of all his other powers ; beyond it he 
attains only to dreams, chimeras, and follies. Thence 
it is manifest that whatever is not rational is repug- 
nant to mankind ; and, consequently, it is impossible 
to conceive where mankind could have obtained the 
idea of holding relations with God issuing from any 
other source than reason. 

But, say you, although reason is truly the most 
elevated point of human nature, yet it does not know 
God with sufficient clearness to unite to him by its 
Own powers, and hence it aspires to that union by 
means which are not its own, such as prophecy and 
Sacrament, 

Pardon me for so speaking to you, but it is impos- 
sible to concentrate in one single phrase more contra- 
diction and unreason. What! reason has not in itself 
the means of uniting to God, and yet it desires to be 
united to God! But why does reason desire this:?” 


What obliges, what urges reason so to desire, since it 


32 Lhe Supernatural Intercourse between 


does not possess the faculties which justify that ambi- 
tion? Either God has willed that man should hold 
intercourse with himself by the intermediary of reason, 
or he has not willed at. ‘In: the first case, “he has 
evidently given to our intellectual movement a vibra- 
tion powerful enough to raise it even to himself; in 
the other case, reason, not being at all called to that 
high prerogative, would feel no more the need of it 
than the duty of exercising it. You must choose, and 
whichever you may choose, you will not explain how 
man,. a purely rational being, tends to God by a mode 
foreign to his nature. 

The vulgar among reasoners solve the difficulty by 
supposing that the human race has been the victim of 
a certain number of impostors who, from age to age, 
have abused its good faith. Primarily, they think, man 
had for prophet only his reason, for sacrament only 
his heart ; he spake to God and God talked with him 
in the sanctuary of the soul; philosophy and religion 
being confounded together by their object and 
method, were but one and the same institution. There 
was no altar, nor worship, nor priesthood—there were 
only man and God. But as there sprang up an am- 
bitious man to found the first throne, so there came 


another to found the first temple. A second followed, 


God and Man. 33 


then a third, and soon the prophetic and sacramental 
leprosy, consecrated under the name of revelation, 
covered with its irremediable impurity the conscience 
of the human race. Philosophy separated from 
religion, some scattered sages preserved in their hearts. 
the pure light and holy liberty of the first ages of the 
world; the rest, a vile herd of error, became captive 
under the yoke of a superstition which nothing could 
uproot, doubtless because it is supported by the habit, 
the antiquity, the name of God, and also by the 
innate weakness of the greater number of minds. 

I will not expose the injury which that doctrine does 
to mankind ; you know that it is common in those who 
separate from the multitude. Let us leave to pride the 
argument of scorn, and accept the glory of a logic, 
calm and worthy of truth. 

That there have been false prophets is not doubtful, 
that many have succeeded, history proves and Chris- 
tianity admits. But why have they succeeded ? Have 
they not succeeded precisely because there are true 
prophets? Have they not succeeded, because, even 
in corrupting religion, they have accepted its dogmatic 
and practical basis, grafting into this divine trunk 
foreign branches which thence derive their life? Have 


they not succeeded because they found in the heart of 


34. The Supernatural Intercourse between 


man, as'God had made it, a ready accomplice? _Impos- 
ture, like every other thing, needs a soil analogous to its 
grain; it germinates only in virtue of a fecundity which 
it receives from the unique source of all fecundity— 
namely, nature. Suppose an impostor who recognised 
no received idea, no real sentiment, no pre-existing 
force: do you think he would succeed in deceiving a 
single man, a single hour? And yet, to explain by 
imposture the mystery which occupies our attention, 
it is necessary that it should deceive all ages and all 
generations. We possess the history of some of those 
extraordinary men who have set up false religions in 
the world; we know, very near to us, Luther and 
Mahomet; what were they, but plagiarists and falsifiers ? 
Issued from a pre-existing religious institution, they 
laid their rash hands upon it, and in order to curtail it, 
they made use of the passions of their times. They 
have degraded the temple, they have not built it. A 
portion of mankind has believed them, because it 
believed before—it believed them to be prophets be- 
cause it believed in prophecies—it has received their 
sacraments, because it had sacraments before. ‘They 
have been causes of error only by an effect of truth. 
This is why the last rendezvous of the question is 


always in nature itself; imposture having no hold else- 


God and Man. 35 


where, it is necessarily forced to seek its support 
therein, and in order so to do, it is needful that it 
should not contradict all the elements of human nature. 
Now you have seen, and I must again repeat it, if God 
has given nothing to man beyond his body and his’ 
mind, if reason is the supreme term of our faculties, 
it is clear that all which does not take its origin there, 
is for us unnatural, chimerical, and vain. Such is 
prophecy—our adversaries avow it—such is sacrament. 
And therefore they cannot be the fruit of imposture, 
above all, the universal fruit of a continued imposture, 
since there would, in that case, be an effect without a 
cause, an edifice without foundation. It is not, then, 
by hazard that Catholic doctrine, after having shown 
us all that God has done for man in the sensible and 
intelligible order, warns us that this is not the limit of 
the divine action in regard to us, but that above those 
precious and first gifts there is another which raises us 
higher and places us in immediate communication with 
the Author of our being, with the principle and end of 
our destinies. By the creating act God raised us up 
before himself as a living and free personality spy the 
act of revelation he entered into communication with 
us, and we with him; he delivered to us the secrets of 


his thought, the plans of his will, and in that effusion, 


D 


36 0 6The Supernatural Intercourse between 


at the same time exterior and interior—exterior by 
the word, interior by light and unction—he created 
the supernatural and religious order. And as the 
nature which left his all-powerful hand perseveres in 
the conditions in which he enchained it, so religion, 
no less faithful, perseveres under the form which 
it received from him. As it is folly to act against 
nature, so it is equally vain to act against religion. 
The one and the other remain as God has willed ; 
what the sun and moon are in the visible firma- 
ment, prophecy and sacrament are in the firmament 
of truth. You will not make the luminaries fall, 
and you will not silence the word of God. And 
if, jealous of the divine work, you aspire to create 
something by yourselves, you will succeed only in pro- 
ducing imitations, which, even in their powerlessness, 
will attest the dogmas you fear, and add lustre to the 
glory you would destroy. What has Luther done, but 
confirm the Church? What has Mahomet done, but 
increase the grandeur of Jesus Christ? What have all 
the usurpers of the prophetic title done, but maintain 
in shadows the remembrance and need of revelation? 
And what do you, in denying revelation, but prove by 
your example that religion is extinguished in every 


mind that denies the reality of a supernatural order P 


God and Man. 37 


The world has reached a remarkable epoch of its 


destiny. For a century it has endeavoured to found 


all human things upon nature and reason ; it believed 
itself capable of reigning alone without the interven- 
tion of any mysterious idea, any indefinite power. 
You have before you the result of this grand attempt. 
Social discipline has fallen to pieces in your hands; the 
ingenious springs to which you purposed to subject it 
have been found too feeble against resistance and 
aggressions. What was generous in your plans of 
reform has had no better success than what was 
chimerical, and Justice wonders that it cannot give to 
your works either duration or majesty. Will you linger 
much longer before you doubt of yourselves? Will 
you not suspect that something is wanting to you, and 
painfully warned by the innate providence of things, 
will you not lift your eyes towards the eternal pole 
where you have. left the science of the past and the 
future? It is high time: let us call God to our help ; 
let us acknowledge that we have relations with him 
more profound than those of nature, and that to 
renounce them, from weakness or pride, is to take from 
the human race, with its highest duties, its highest 
virtues and its most necessary faculties, 
D 2 


th sa 
Ve kote a! 


Pegi va 
(Coe Fe? ee 
aes 


ate We 


TWO OBJECTIONS AGAINST 
THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE 
BETWEEN GOD AND MAN. 


is 
c 


Af 
“, 
- 


TWO OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE SUPERNATURAL 
INTERCOURSE BETWEEN GOD AND MAN. 


My Lorp,—GENTLEMEN, 

AFTER having established that the intercourse 
between man and God is not based upon nature and 
reason, but upon a higher order, which Catholic 
doctrine calls supernatural, the course of ideas would 
lead us to seek why it is so, and what are the motives 
which have determined God not to include in our 
sensible and intelligible faculties all the means that 
we need for entering into relations with him. But 
rationalism does not permit us to advance so rapidly. 
The question of the supernatural order is too grave, 
for rationalists to yield to the demonstration which we 
have given without endeavouring at least to weaken 
it. Let us then hear their objections. 

_ It is true, they say, that if we look only to the 
surface of things, prophecy and sacrament possess a 


character of universality and perpetuity by which they 


42 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


seem to advance side by side with nature and reason ; 
but this is only an appearance which vanishes at the 
first serious glance thrown upon that illogical insti- 
tution. In fact, before it could possess a real univer- 
sality, a real perpetuity, the subject or thought that 
aspires to these great characters must be the same in 
all times and places; without unity, universality and 
perpetuity are impossible, since universality is but the 
expansion of unity in space, and perpetuity its expan- 
sion in time. Thus nature is really universal and 
perpetual, because her laws, in whatever age or place 
they are consulted, give to all who interrogate them 
an answer that never varies. At the pole as at the 
equator, under the instruments of Newton as under 
the eyes of Aristotle, physical light falls upon and 
emerges again from an object in forming a constant 
angle. Itis the same with reason. As the faculty of 
a free being, it does not follow the caprices of the will, 
it approves or condemns according to rules which do 
not bend. Speak to the Athenian of Pericles, to the 
Arab of the desert, to the savage of unexplored 
forests, to the child of barbarism, or the full-formed 
man of civilization, all understand you, and even when 
they dispute their own opinions among themselves, 


they invoke uniform principles to maintain them, 


Intercourse between God and Man. 43 


which are as clear and certain to the intelligence of 
the ignorant as to that of the learned. Is it so in 
regard to the supernatural order? Or, rather, is there 
anything comparable to the chaos of superstitions of 
which it is composed? Open yonder Pantheon ; what 
see you there? Gods insulting one another ; dogmas 
contradicting one another; religions disavowing, 
priesthoods anathematising one another; altars in 
violent opposition ; discord infinite as the sacred object 
which those frightful controversies of powerlessness 
and pride pretend to attain. Behold the supernatural ! 
Behold it as it appears in history and before our eyes ! 
And this is called a divine thing, an institution not 
only equal to nature and reason, but which, superior 
to all created things, should serve as a law to the con- 
science, a light to the mind, a crown to the universe ! 
For us, whatever may be the cause of this terrible 
phenomenon, we accuse it of being human; it is 
human because it is not one. 

If you reply that among all religions one only is the 
true one, of which the others are but impious or pitiful 
imitations, the difficulty will, perhaps, lose its force 
on one side, but only to regain it on the other, and 
with usury. For one single religion being true, one 


alone is good for the soul, one alone establishes an 


44. Lwo Objections against the Supernatural 


efficacious communication between God and man. 
Thenceforth it is necessary to discern it among the 
crowd of others, it is necessary to choose without error. 
And what a task imposed upon the human race in a 
matter where it is a question of finding or losing God! 
Can it be that to us feeble creatures, already wasted 
in the toils which our transitory existence costs us, ~ 
an enigma to solve should have been given as the 
condition of our eternal life! Is it possible ? Is it 
possible that eternity costs us anything but virtue, and 
that, sparing in regard to the infinite, God takes cruel 
delight in becoming a sphinx to man? Ah! if truth 
be our nourishment, it should fall from heaven like 
rain, pass on like the wind, swell its waves like the 
sea, grow like the harvest in the days when man 
waits for that blessing upon his labour which created 
the earth, and commanded it to serve us. Every 
man is able to trace a furrow and cast seed into it: 
is every man able to unravel the confusion of the 
innumerable religions that contend for the honour of 
coming from God and of leading mankind to him ? 
None will dare to advance such a pretension ; and, 
consequently, we oppose to the supernatural order, 
as a double accusation, first, its want of unity, next, 


the impossibility of discerning the true among all the 


Intercourse between God and Man. AS 


positive religions, supposing even that one of them is 
true. 

Such are the difficulties which arrest us, and which 
I must solve before advancing another step. 

It is certain that unity is an essential character of 
the works of God, not a dead unity which would 
exclude variety—that is to say, harmony in number 
and extent—but a fertile unity, which, coming from 
God himself, brings back to him, as to their source, 
all the irradiations of light and life. Unity is but 
order, and order is evidently an attribute of God and 
of his works. 

It is certain also that, considering the mass of 
religions, although they all spring from the idea and 
fact of a supernatural revelation, although they have 
among them the very significative relationship of 
prayer, their dogmatic constitution nevertheless esta- 
blishes a flagrant contradiction between the greater 
number of them. Unity is at their base, it is not 
in their architecture, and that diversity necessarily 
suggests in the secondary origin of the greater 
number the presence of another hand than the hand 
of God. 

‘Whose is that hand? Who has touched the divine 
work after God? What power has suddenly appeared 


46 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


behind the Creator, to introduce even into religion, 
which was the crowning work of the universe, the 
seeds of discord and death? That power is yourselves. 
God did not place you among his works to remain 
there in the inertness of captive contemplation, but to 
be there the free co-operators of his thought and his 
glory ; he did not create you to adore him in a servile 
manner, but to love him so much the more as you are 
able to hate him, to serve him so much the better as 
you are able to rebel against him, to be so much the 
more the efficacious instruments of his name as you are 
able to dishonour it. ‘This is why wherever God is in 
this world there are you also; wherever he works you 
work also, whether in the sense of his designs, or in a 
contrary sense. And itis not upon a part of his work 
only that this power has been given to you; you 
possess it upon the whole, in the natural as well as in 
the supernatural order, against nature and reason as 
against prophecy and sacrament. You are able to 
deny all; you are able to deny God as well as Jesus 
Christ, society as well as the Church, mathematical 
truth as well as revealed truth, visible good as well as 
invisible good, time as well as eternity. Nothing 
escapes from your empire, because, on the one hand, 


your liberty has no limits, and, on another, since all 


Intercourse between God and Man. 47 


is linked together in the world, the blow which you 
give to one point is necessarily felt in all the spheres 
of creation and of the infinite. Nature, reason, and. 
religion are three progressive laws whose light is reci- 
procal, and whose force is in common—the intelligence 
divides them only by a schism which wounds all the 
three, and pride obtains great success only in ruins 
which form a tomb alike for both. The will of pride 
is not to obey, and it obeys as long as a law exists 
whatever may be its origin, its form, or its name. 
Thence it comes that pride rests only in its absolute 
sovereignty, and that, measuring its force by the 
greatness of its desire, it has not despaired of attaining 
to the two sovereign acts which belong only to God 
—the acts of destroying and of creating, of destroying 
the world as God had made it, in order to create a 
world as man wills it to be. 

You think that I exaggerate, and that if man has 
really attacked religion, because it is but a supposed 
part of the divine work, he has at least always respected 
nature and reason, which are that work itself in all its 

certainty and its sincerity. You have said this in 
opposing the constant uniformity of the natural order 
to the contradictory variety of the religious order; but, 


I ask, does not the sound of the world reach you? Do 


48 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


you not hear from this very place the secular clamour 
_ of its divisions? Is it only at the portals of the temple 
that the combat is engaged between man against man 
and man against God? Stand upon the forum of 
nations, enter their academies, open their laboratories 
of science—wherever you meet with the human mind, 
you find war, doctrines against doctrines, politics 
against politics, history against history, facts against 
facts, affirmations against negations. Can you ques- 
tion this? And thenceforth in what is the natural 
order more united than the supernatural order? In 
what does it escape more from the attacks of our 
hberty? Religious contradiction even holds a rational 
contradiction ; for the dogma which I accept and 
which you reject, I accept with my reason, and with 
yours you reject it. We differ in regard to faith only 
because we differ rationally. Say you that if we 
differ about consequences, we recognise the same 
principles, and that in them the immutable unity of 
reason survives and consists? But by the same title 
religion may pretend to unity and immutability ; 
it also claims principles upon which all forms agree, 
such as the existence of a Supreme Being, his action 
upon man, his positive intercourse with us by reve- 


lation, ceremonies, laws, rewards and punishments. 


L[ntercourse between God and Man, 49 


Where begins the contest if it is not in the dogmatical 
development of these common principles ? 

There is then parity between the two orders, and if 
your accusation concludes to the prejudice of the one, 
it concludes no less to the prejudice of the other. 
Therefore learn that the same thing you say against 
religion, scepticism has said against reason—even as 
you deny supernatural unity, because of the divergency 
of religions, scepticism denies rational unity, because of 
the multitude of opinions and practices which divides 
sages no less than nations, Pascal scornfully remarked 
it: “Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error beyond 
them!” Survey then the whole abyss; see what in the 
hands of man that reason becomes which you do not 
doubt of, and if you refuse to believe in the avowals of 
philosophy, believe at least in what is passing around 
you. What truth is not denied? What instinct of 
nature is not outraged? What human institution, how 
familiar soever it may be to us either by tradition or 
by the heart, is not treated as an enemy? You wonder 
that Christ found contradictors and judges eighteen 
hundred years ago. Lift up your eyes, behold reason 
itself before the tribunal of Caiphas and the Romans, 

_ Be not alarmed, however, and in learning what man 


may do against the work of God, learn also what he 


50 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


cannot do. Yes, there is a great power in man, for 
God is with him; there is a great power in man, for 
Satan is with him ; there is a great power in man, for 
man is with himself: but with God on his right hand, 
Satan on his left, and himself between, man is neither 
capable of destroying nor of creating an atom. An 
atom suffices eternally to arrest all his power: how 
much more the universe! Sixty centuries in the 
service of our liberty have not given us the glory of 
making or destroying a grain of dust; how much more 
will nature, reason, and religion resist us! Be not 
alarmed then; neither you who doubt, nor you who 
believe, be not alarmed. God is in all that is, he 
maintains all that he has once willed ; and our hberty, 
however important, is but the rock upon which the 
ocean breaks, remaining still the ocean. Therefore, 
being a child of truth in this most troubled age, I hear 
the tempest unmoved; I receive light from the flash 
that falls upon the temple, and with my head resting 
upon the threshold of the parvis, I repose in the 
divine slumber of infallible faith.’ 

Powerlessness to destroy, powerlessness to create, 
such is in man the limit of pride, such is the law which 
protects all that is—nature, reason, religion; against 


the attempts of liberty. And yet it is very essential 


Lntercourse between God and Man. 5I 


that liberty, even in its abuse, should be a fertile 
power ; for were it otherwise, it would be but a main- 
spring poised in the void, a responsible name of an 
imaginary activity. God, in assuring his own empire, 
that the world might not become the toy of unbridled 
disorder, should have left such an effect to our action 
that even in its errors it should not be the vain effort 
of an abortive being. What is then the part of God, 
and what the part of man? God, as we have seen, 
has reserved to himself the substance of things; he 
has willed that man should never attain to it; for if 
the substance of things had been given to us, God would 
have remained only as the tranquil spectator of the 
ruins of the universe. But if substance escapes from 
us, what remains to us? If we cannot destroy a grain 
of dust in nature, a principle in the intelligence, an 
element in the supernatural order, what can we do in 
reality? In order to understand this, we must remark 
that all substance has a mode of being, and that the 
substance remaining invariable, the mode is subject to 
change. It is then the mode which our liberty seizes. 
The mode is the figure of things ; being powerless 
against things, we have the resource of disfiguring 
them. We disfigure nature, reason, religion. 


You have received from the Creator a visage in 


+) 


& 


52 Lwo Olections against the Supernatural 


which power and goodness shine. Your lips become 
animated with a smile whose grace outlives their motion ; 
your eyes flash forth a light which springs from the 
fount of a living intelligence, but which, tempered by 
modesty, excites respect without fear ; your brow, pure 
and calm, crowns with its serenity the living charm 
of your features, and wherever the regard of a soul 
lights upon you, that soul knows and loves your own. 
O youth, these are great gifts! But a single hour is 
sufficient to tarnish them, a single crime is sufficient 
to dishonour them. Nature, whose masterpiece you 
aré, will not resist the blows which you inflict upon it 
in the secret of your conscience, beauty departs from 
you in proportion as God leaves your heart, and soon 
that head, the object of admiration and love, remains 
but the ignoble crown of a reprobate or a debauchee. 
You will not have destroyed in yourself the natural 
image of God, you will have disfigured it. 

So also you may lay waste the earth, burn the 
forests, disperse the sources of rivers, infect the air, 
doom admirable portions of our common heritage to 
solitude and sterility, and you have done this but too 
often! The hand of barbarians withered Latium ; the 
tyranny of the sons of Mahomet, touching the soil 


of Greece and Syria, dried up sources which were 


Lniercourse between God and Man. 53 


deemed inexhaustible, and destroyed charms which 
were believed to be under the eternal protection of 
the purest light that has ever shone upon creation. 
But how cruel soever those injuries may be, the 
earth subsists and nourishes man. Better generations 
may succeed those hordes which have not respected the 
common mother of the human race; they may rouse 
the fields of Attica and the hills of Messina from their 
involuntary sleep; shade, invited by cultivation, may 
descend again from heaven upon the deserts of Rome : 
life, which had but turned aside, may shoot forth 
on every hand, and the very ruins become witnesses 
to our inability to deal the blow that causes death. 

So it is with errors and crimes against reason. A 
century dawns, it is bold in the things of the intelli. 
gence, it agitates ideas as the traveller, at the close of 
along day, shakes the dust and weariness from his 
feet; it takes pleasure in doubting, pride in contra- 
dicting ; it strikes the pillars which aforetime supported 
the structure of science and wisdom ; tradition loses its 
influence upon it, conscience becomes but a mute or a 
suspicious oracle. A moment arrives when astonished 
minds ask if truth is not a dream and good an 
imposture. But in the very midst of this orgie 
of scepticism, reason is attacked only by reason; it 

E 2 


* 


54 Lwo Objections against the Supernatural 


triumphs even in the very wound which it inflicts 
upon itself. Negation affirms that the intelligence 
lives and sees, as the eye, closing before the sun, 
attests the presence and the power of his rays. It is 
needful to live, and notwithstanding the universal 
delirium, the course of human things follows its 
ancient ways ; mankind marches before Phyrrho who 
denies motion. Mankind believes, hopes, combines 
its thoughts and its actions. Then, time sounds an 
hour ; a new age opens which raises up truth again, 
as the freshness of morning raises up in the fields 
the grass which had drooped at evening. ‘The altars 
of doubt are overthrown ; the negations but yesterday 
idolized are scattered to the winds; those who de- 
spised are despised ; they are forgotten who forgot ; 
a period is marked in history, and the future mounts 
to the horizon of eternity. There was a deformation 
of the human mind, but no destruction. 

Do you any longer wonder that religion, struggling 
with the liberty of man, should be subject to the same 
injuries and the same vicissitudes? Why should 
religion be more fortunate than nature and reason ? 
Why, in drawing nearer to heaven, should our ambi- 
tion for sovereignty lose the energy which permits it 


to violate the inferior sanctuaries? Whatever shores 


L[ntercourse between God and Man. 55 


we may touch, higher or lower, we bear with us, as 
an indefectible attribute, the power of good and evil. 
And that very power increases in proportion as we 
rise in the hierarchy of things ; it is greater against 
reason than against nature, greater against religion 
than against reason. This is because we can raise 
ourselves only by drawing near to the infinite, and 
because the infinite, by its disproportion to our 
personal limits, necessarily offers a greater obstacle 
to revolt and error. Who does not conceive how 
easy it is to substitute chimerical imitations for re- 
ligious dogmas? Man has done this; he has done 
this from impatience under too heavy a yoke; from 
weariness of antiquity, from forgetfulness of tradition ; 
from aversion towards a negligent or corrupt priest- 
hood ; from obedience to the ascendancy of famous 
sectaries. But whatever may have been the motive of 
his separation, under whatever point of heaven and 
in whatever time it may have begun, never has man, 
living in the state of a people—that is to say, in the 
natural state—been able to abrogate religion or change 
its essential characters. He has always believed in 
the positive communication between the human race 
-and God, by means of the word direct from God. 


The perverted religions prove this no less eloquently 


\ 


56 Lio Objections against the Supernatural 


than the Christian religion. What was a temple, but 
an oracle in the minds of the pagan nations? What 
an idol, but marble and gold speaking in the name of 
God? What a priest, but a body and soul inspired 
by the breath of God? What are they now in every 
part of the earth—priest, temple, idol—but an incar- 
nation, more or less living and near, of the Divinity ? 
The unity of the idea outlives the multiplicity of 
form ; moreover, when that form is studied, there is 
found, in the variety of the signs, the mutilated 
remains of an identical tradition. 

To faith in prophecies all religions have joined 
faith in sacraments ; all, we have said, and proved it, 
called sacrifices, ceremonies, and prayer, to the help 
_of the soul striving to tend towards God. Homer 
immolates victims with the liturgy of Leviticus ; 
Delphos commands expiations in the same language 
which Benares speaks; the Etruscan augury blesses the 
Roman hills as the Druid consecrated the forests of 
Gaul; and above all those living rites of invincible 
custom, the sacrament of prayer rises towards God to 
demand miracles of him in the name of all grief that 
hopes, and of all weakness that believes. Doubtless 
prayer has not always known God under the same 


name; it has not everywhere known his true and 


yA 


Intercourse between God and Man. 57 


eternal history: but the want was everywhere the 
same, the aspiration similar, and when the heart was 
sincere, prayer did not fail to be efficacious. The 
supplant charged with grief, on bending the knee 
before a deceptive statue, forgot the fable that educa- 
tion had graven in his mind; he remembered the 
unknown God whom Athens revered at the foot of 
the Parthenon, and that God who seeks uprightness 
and knows misfortune, heard the cry of faith in the 
lamentations of a humbled heart. The darkness of 
idolatry became enlightened; truth descended with 
grace, and the soul of man met the Spirit of God 
through the illusions of error. 

Acknowledge then that you have no more destroyed 
religion than you have destroyed reason and nature ; 
you have no more changed its essence than you have 
changed the essence of logic and chemistry. You 
have disfigured all, and God has saved all. Nature 
has resisted your mutilations ; reason, your systems ; 
religion, your unbelief; and all these being universal 
and perpetual, attest so much the more the power 
which founded them, as that power has respected 
yours in permitting you not to respect its own. Tell 
me, what has withheld you? Why is it that so much 


life remains amidst so many ruins? You desired, you 


58 Lwo Oljections against the Supernatural 


still desire, to destroy religion, in which you see only 
a chaos of baseless ideas and practices; why is 
religion still standing? You would exercise the 
sovereign act of destroying in order to arrive at the 
sovereign act of creating, and, indeed, there is a 
greatness in that ambition which would entitle it to 
praise, if nothing could be great against justice and 
truth ; why have you neither destroyed nor created 
religion? Look at Luther... . Luther is an old 
shadow, but since we are permitted to evoke shadows, 
let me evoke him and call him to account for the 
mystery which holds my mind and yours in suspense. 
Well, Luther ; since thou despisest the Church, since 
thou hast resolved to extirpate from Europe the faith 
which was once thine own, why dost thou not strike 
the only blow that touches the root of the question ? 
Why not overthrow the architect with the edifice ? 
Why not deny Jesus Christ ? | 

Ah! why? Luther did not himself know. He 
obeyed faith at the same time as revolt, and was 
illogical in the one as in the other—he was the 
formidable expression of great weakness in great 
power. His conscience responded to the conscience 
of his time, as the conscience of his time to that of 


all ages. It included with an element of protestation 


Intercourse between God and Man. 59 


an imperious want of belief, and the success of. 
Luther, like all the other heresiarchs, was, that he 
struck at the very heart of his epoch, by taking from 
its faith all that it could lose, and leaving to it alk 
that it wished to keep. Had he denied Jesus Christ 
he would have been a Voltaire without ancestors— 
that is to say, a madman; and Voltaire himself, pre- 
ceded by two centuries of Protestantism, could only 
attain to the position of a sage—that is to say, a chief 
of a school and not a chief of the people. 

This example includes all the others. It initiates 
us into the secret of religious revolutions, which are 
so much the more sure of success as they swerve less 
from the primordial sacramentary and prophetic basis; 
so much the more decisive in favour of the truth of 
religion as they preserve it in violating it. For, in 
fine, if for sixty centuries the human race obeyed the 
same dogma and the same liturgy, would you not 
recognise in that tranquil unanimity the sign of a 
divine institution? Now the sign of unanimity com- 
bated, of unanimity contradicted and _ persevering, 
notwithstanding such controversy, is manifestly stilk 
more worthy to move an attentive mind. For the 
first unanimity may be explained by the absence of 


examination and the force of habit, whilst the second 


60 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


can only be explained by a power superior to all the 
springs of human thought and all the attacks of its 
liberty. To affirm in denying, to maintain in destroy- 
ing, to consent in protesting, this is doubtless to nse 
up against truth, but it is also to render to truth the 
highest of all homage, since it is the homage of an 
enemy. 

It remains to be seen whether God has not done 
still more for the preservation of his religion upon 
earth, and whether among all those who have adul- 
terated its original purity, there is not one which has 
preserved that purity unstained, and which may be 
easy to recognise by inimitable characters of grandeur 
and sincerity. I hope to show you this without 
trouble as well as without delay. 

Let us first of all banish from our minds the vain 
idea that there are an infinite multitude of different 
religions here below. It is not so. Nothing has been 
more sterile than the imagination of man in the matter 
of religions. As, in considering the common features 
of beings, we collect them with a certain number of 
primitive families, so also in comparing together the 
religious branches which spread out in mankind, we 
find them terminating in three principal trunks, the 


only ones really distinct by their physiognomy and by 


_L[ntercourse between God and Man. OI 


an invisible and mutual repulsion—I mean idolatry, 
Christianity, and Mahometism; I do not name Judaism, 
because before Jesus Christ it was but Christianity 
awaiting its crown, and since Jesus Christ it is but 
Christianity without its crown. There remain then 
the Christian churches which cleave to the trunk of 
the Gospel and Christ ; the idolatrous sects, neither 
of which excommunicated the other, and whose 
symbols vied with one another in mutual respect in 
the council of the Roman Pantheon—in fine, the 
branches of Islamism, which all bend at the feet of 
Mahomet and the Koran. Name me a religion, I will 
trace it either to the idol, the cross, or the crescent ; 
but there is no peace possible, there is no common 
ground, between the idol, the cross, and the crescent 
—those memorable banners which still divide the 
generations of men, and which bear in their folds 
three theologies separated by a radically different 
conception of the intercourse between man and God. 
In fact, in this intercourse, which constitutes religion 
and supposes an approaching of two beings so naturally 
removed from one another, either the mind conceives 
an alliance between the divine nature and human 
nature that attains even to confounding them—which 


is idolatry ; or it conceives that alliance under a form 


62 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


that excludes compatibility between the two natures— 
which is Mahometism ; or, in fine, it admits the union 
of the two natures remaining distinct even in their 
intimacy—which is Christianity. Idolatry confounds 
man and God; Mahometism keeps them at a distance 
from each other; Christianity associates them: these 
three systems resume all existing and all possible 
religions, 

Antiquity in general was lost in idolatry, and even 
the superstitions which had not begun in idolatry ended 
by falling upon it as upon an inevitable shoal. The 
reason of this is, in fact, that it is difficult to halt just 
at the point of Theandry—a name by which Christian 
theology expresses the participation of God in man 
and of man in God. As soon as the intelligence is 
no longer enlightened by the full light of religious 
truth, it vacillates before that prodigious mystery, and 
according as it yields more to reason or to remem-_ 
brance, to the inspiration of nature, or the impulsion 
of theological instinct, it remains behind or runs 
beyond the true. Instinct, remembrance, and a 
confused presentiment vanquished the intelligence in 
the intermediary period of mankind—I mean in that 
comprised between the deluge and the coming of 


Christ. When Jesus Christ appeared, that wonderful — 


Intercourse between God and Man. 63 


restitution of the eternal type of the alliance between 
God and man struck the world with such a flash of 
light, that the pagan theogony, notwithstanding its 
twenty centuries of empire, was no longer able to 
maintain the honour of deceiving the human race. 
Error was obliged to take refuge upon another basis, 
and to assume another form. Arius prepared its 
edifice, Mahomet completed it—Arius denied the 
divinity of Jesus Christ, Mahomet declared the union 
between the divine and human natures in one single 
personality to be impossible, impious, idolatrous ; and, 
Separating, as far as possible, the two terms of 
religious intercourse, he pronounced the fundamental 
sentence of Islamism, or the new faith: God is God, 
and Mahomet is his prophet. God is God—that is to 
say, God can be only God ; Mahomet is his prophet— 
that is to say, the divine action with regard to man 
is limited to prophecy, and the action of man in 
regard to God is limited to the faith which accepts 
prophecy by adoring and praying. No other religion 
has appeared since Mahomet; none other will 
appear in the future. For, below Mahomet there is 
but pure rationalism ; above him we necessarily find 
idolatry or Christianity. 

Christianity fills the middle place between Ma- 


64 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


hometism and idolatry. It humanises God without 
causing him to descend, it divinises man without 
changing his substance, equally removed from the 
extravagance of pantheism, which confounds all beings 
in a divine chaos, and the coldness of theism, which 
relegates the creature to a hopeless distance from the 
Creator. 

Here, then, lies the choice ; here, the contest. For 
whoever would come out of practical atheism, there 
are in all history but these three doors open; he 
must be an idolater, a Christian, or a Mussulman, he 
must bend the knee before an idol, bear the cross, or 
hoist the crescent—the one or the other; or remain 
indifferent among the spectators who hear unmoved 
the name of God, and who regard the future without 
preparing for it. 

The choice being thus reduced to these, the only 
possible terms, nothing is easier than to recognise 
where is the true religion, the religion instituted by 
God and preserved in the integrity of its dogmas, its 
morals, and its liturgy—that is to say, in the integrity 
of prophecy and sacrament. It is said that Tacitus 
abridged all, because he saw all. God is a still greater 
abbreviator, because he labours in eternity for 


creatures who have only time. You are in haste. God 


Lntercourse between God and Man. 65 


is so more than you. You are eager to know truth— 
God is still more eager to impart it to you. Listen 
then : you will need but a ray of light and an instant 
of good will. 

Although idolatry and Mahometism start from 
absolutely contradictory points, I place them upon 
the same line in the discussion, because they bear 
upon their front the same characters of shame and 
inanition. I do not say to you—Mahomet has 
wrought no miracles, nor has idolatry; idolatry has 
not prophesied, nor has Mahomet. This is the detail 
of the question. It requires time to examine it, and 
we must advance quickly. Now to him who wishes 
to advance quickly, God has prepared a way which 
shortens all. He has placed in religion, as in all 
other things, a physiognomy. Behold a man whom 
you have never met; his origin and his acts are 
unknown to you—who is he? What does he desire ? 
What is the secret of his soul? You know nothing of 
it, and you have neither opportunity nor leisure to 
learn. Brought together for a moment, which may 
never return, you need to judge him by the light of a 
glance. You will judge him, in fact, and if some 
experience has initiated you to the play of the inner 


life upon the features which form the accent of the 


66 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


visage, you will not be deceived—above all, you will 
not be deceived if great vices or great virtues have 
ploughed their furrows in the moving flesh in which 
you study truth. 

So is it with religion. Every religion has a soul 
which is reflected in the body of its doctrines and its 
history ; and, consequently, every religion has a 
physiognomy. What is the physiognomy of idolatry 
and of Mahometism? Do you feel in them the 
pulsation of anything divine? Is your conscience 
moved by them, and with your eye fixed upon Jupiter 
or Mahomet, would you ask yourself that formidable 
question—May not God be there? No, Gentlemen, 
no; not one of you has ever given to either of those 
religions the honour of a doubt; not one of you has 
ever interrogated himself in their presence, and been 
tempted to exclaim—Perhaps! The perhaps comes 
to you from elsewhere; it descends into your soul 
from another region, and if there were here below 
only idolatry and Islamism to represent God, you 
would not even give yourselves the trouble to deny 
—you would pass them by without hatred, with- 
out scorn, without pride, as you pass before a heap 
of stones which has not even the architecture of a 


ruin. 


Litercourse between God and Man. 67 


In the celebrated assembly which inaugurated the 
unachieved era of our revolutions, two men met 
together endowed with unequal eloquence, who both 
sat for a long time on the same side, and defended 
together the coming of the age from which we have 
issued. But, at length, the hazards of public life fell 
between them, and separated them; the day came 
- when they were to ascend the tribune to combat there 
before the eyes of a population awaiting this trial, and 
who had prepared applause for the younger and 
feebler of the two. He appeared first; the popular 
movement, which he was sure of, raised his language 
above itself, genuine enthusiasm responded to him ; 
he felt that he had nothing to fear, and that, at least, 
he should share the honour of the rostrum with the 
powerful enemy arrayed against him. This man 
ascended calm and collected; received by unusual 
silence, he measured with his soul all the popularity 
which he had lost, and drawing from that obstacle, 
new to him, a power of desperation, he turned like a 
lion in the terrible lair of his eloquence. Involuntary 
bursts of applause taught him what he already knew— 
his triumph ; when, suddenly, he turned towards his 
adversary, no longer as orator against orator, but like 


an eagle hovering over his prey, and hurled to him 


¥F 


68 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


that sublime and crushing apostrophe—“ Barnave, 
there is no divinity in thee!” 

This expression of Mirabeau to Barnave is the 
expression which ends the controversy with regard to 
Mahometism and idolatry ; or, rather, controversy is 
not even possible, and from the first observation 
thrown upon those miserable corruptions of religious 
truth, the mind disdainfully turns, and exclaims— 
There is no divinity in you! Why? How? What 
is it then that gives or takes away the divine 
physiognomy? I know not, perhaps. What I do 
know is, that there is a feature of baseness which 
descends even to the face of the brute, as there is a 
feature of greatness which rises even to a superhuman 
transformation. What I do know... but listen a 
moment. On a day known in history, a Roman 
proconsul appeared upon a balcony ; by his side stood 
a criminal covered with wounds, a reed was tied to 
his hands, his brow pierced with a crown of thorns, 
his body muffled in a purple robe, which added to his 
humiliations the injury of ironical majesty. The 
proconsul turned timidly towards the multitude, and 
said—Behold the man! The people replied by an 
acclamation which called for his blood, and the 


Roman obeyed and delivered him up to them. But 


Intercourse between God and Man. 69 


behind that infuriated people mankind has stood up; 
it has regarded the man in its turn, the man 
condemned, scourged, crucified; and striking its 
breast, it has exclaimed—Behold God! On another 
day, Greece assembled her artists to obtain from their 
genius an image worthy of their adorations. Phidias 
was chosen. He took his chisel—he cut one of those 
famous marbles which well-nigh breathed before the 
hand of the sculptor had touched them, he gave to it 
light, thought, glory, repose, and when Greece drew 
aside the veil that covered the Olympian Jupiter, she 
cried with a serious and unanimous voice—Behold 
God! But mankind has risen behind that gifted 
people; it has regarded the object of a memory 
which has remained so great, and pitying Athens still 
more than its statue, it has exclaimed—Behold 
man ! 

Behold man! All the arts of Attica, all the poetry 
of Homer, all the grandeurs of Latium—nothing in 
twenty centuries of duration has been able to hide the 
ineffable misery of idolatry; and Islamism has con- 
quered a half of the world only to exhibit in it, under 
a form opposite but equally vain, the powerlessness 
‘of all religions, save that which has made sages believe, 


and which makes the impious doubt. 
F 2 


70 Lwo Objections against the Supernatural 


This striking absence of divinity, which is the 
prominent feature of idolatry and Islamism, suffices to 
judge them. In fact, it is easy to understand that 
man, whatever he may do, will never be able to 
give to his works a really divine character. The 
more he mounts beyond his sphere, in order to attain 
a glory which surpasses him, the further he falls away 
from truth, in which alone is the source of the 
beautiful. As conqueror, legislator, philosopher— 
simple mortal, in fine—he has days in his history 
worthy of admiration ; would he touch the holy arch 
by uplifting himself in imposture, he loses the secret 
of the grandeurs of this world and the elevations of the 
other. He makes a parody of the name of God; and 
that name, to be avenged, needs but itself. Not only 
have the false religions no divine physiognomy, but to 
this negative character they infallibly join the sign of 
flagrant immorality.. Lift your eyes to the antique 
altars! Dare I even ask you to lift your eyes to 
these ? Notwithstanding the distance which veils 
them from us, dare I counsel you a glance, however 
obscure, upon their mysteries and their ceremonies ? 
I dare not—I dare not paint to you what those Greeks 
adored—those Greeks so delicate, our masters in the 


art of feeling and expressing the beautiful. I dare not 


L[ntercourse between God and Man. 71 


describe to you the pomps wherein they exposed, in 
the name of God, their wives, their children, their own 
heart. That which was their religion we cannot even 
make a matter of discourse; that which was sacred 
for them, on passing from my lips to your ears, 
would be a sacrilege for you and forme. They had 
raised up their gods in such sublime infamy, that we 
cannot perceive them in it, were it but to accuse 
them. 

All those gods, I admit, were not of equally 
degraded mire; some of them drew near to man by 
their virtues. I believe even that a better image of 
the Divinity rose up from the conscience before those 
idols, and inwardly braved the public worship which 
was rendered to them; but this was the effect of 
antique truth—it was the groaning of God in the 
presence of falsehood, and falsehood did not the less 
subsist with the chastisement of its corruption. 

Mahomet, I also admit, in his dogmatic and 
liturgical exposition of God, has not incurred the 
immorality of idolatry. His design, which was the 
reverse of the fables of polytheism, did not permit it 
to him. But that even renders more striking and 
“more formidable against him the shameful materialism 


which has resulted from his work, and whose germ, 


72 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


although perhaps dissimulated, is nevertheless visible 
in the Koran. Mahomedan morals have not put to 
the blush the morals of paganism; and these in 
certain things—such as the unity and indissolubility 
of marriage—have left far behind them the habits of 
the children of Mahomet. Neither Islamism nor 
idolatry have known and taught the spiritual life ; 
they have not drawn the soul above the attractions 
of this earth, in order to impart to it the joy of an 
immaterial aliment. Even in revealing immortality to 
the soul they have left it a prey to the passions, the 
torments, the virtues which death ends. 

What other sign would you desire against those 
miserable religions? And yet there is another not 
less palpable, not less striking; it is their logical 
incapacity. Men may be wrong and yet discuss— 
it seems even that nothing is more easy, so common 
are its examples—what then shall we say of a religion 
which reasoning fails to defend? And if you believe 
that such an excess of powerlessness is not possible, 
take the trouble to seek for the theological, historical 
and polemical works of Mahometism and idolatry. 
Where are they? In India, as well as in Greece and 
Rome, idolatry has had poets for theologians ; and 


when Christianity taught it what was a religion that 


Intercourse between God and Man. 2 
3 


wrote and spoke, it had for defenders philosophers 
who overthrew its mythology in attempting to justify 
it. Mahometism has in no greater degree dreamed 
of establishing its divinity by discussion; it has 
reigned where its scimitar was master, it has perished 
Where its scimitar has been broken. Now, under 
our own eyes, it maintains the rest of its empire 
only by a law which interdicts the conversion of its 
followers under the penalty of death. Paganism, 
menaced by the preaching of Christianity, did not 
act otherwise under the Cesars of Rome; it does 
not now act otherwise under the despots of China 
and Japan. What is the cause of this, if it be 
not logical incapacity, or, if you like it better, the 
incapability of reasoning? Pascal said, “It is easier 
to find monks than reasons.” ‘The true version was: 
‘It is easier to find executioners than reasons.” The 
history of Islamism proves it to the envy of the history 
of paganism. We ought to find there, by the dis- 
position of God and the force of things, an incurable 
imbecility ; by the disposition of God, who willed not 
that religion should be corrupted without preserving 
the cruel marks of its adulteration; by the force of 
things, which does not permit that an error of such 


magnitude should anywhere find foundations. The 


74 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


foundations of the true religion are an antiquity which 
mounts by certain monuments to the very origin of 
the world; an uninterrupted course of miraculous 
and prophetic acts leave here and there their in- 
effaceable sign in the history of nations; a dogma 
serious and profound; a moral teaching which 
explains itself by revolutions in the morals of the 
human race; a priesthood worthy to speak of God 
to vice and virtue ; a providence which governs this 
extraordinary whole, and, in fine, maintains it by a 
constant prodigy ; a tissue wherein all blends together 
—wherein each sustains the other in a duration of 
sixty centuries, notwithstanding the magnitude of the 
obstacles and the weakness of the means. How 
could a religion issued from man by -an accidental 
degradation, attribute to itself or preserve such 
foundations? We may give the appearance of truth 
to a system of philosophy, because it is but a 
combination of ideas; but religion being an immense 
order of universal and perpetual facts, how should we 
create these facts if they do not exist, or how should 
we call them to the help of error if they exist to the 
profit of truth? It would be more easy for man to 
create the world than to create a religion with divine 


characters; for the world had but to vanquish 


Intercourse between God and Man. 75 


nothingness, and that religion would have to vanquish 
the essence of things. 

Such is the reason of the logical incapacity which 
you remark in Islamism and in idolatry, and which 
would deprive them of all power upon the mind, if the 
vileness of their physiognomy and the spectacle of 
their immorality left them any chance of seducing an 
intelligence free to judge them. 

Of the three religions which divide the world, 
two are out of the lists: Christianity alone is now 
before us. 

Regard it, Gentlemen, not to ask yourselves if it 
be true, but if it resemble the two others. Does it 
resemble them? Is there here the same logical in- 
capacity, the same immorality, the same absence of the 
divine physiognomy? You may well combat it, you 
must combat it. For it teaches, it discusses, it writes, 
it has filled the earth with its language, and your 
libraries with its works. Whatever you touch, you 
meet with it. It opposes its sages to your sages, its 
scholars to your scholars, its writers to your writers, 
its politicians to your politicians, its men of genius to 
your men of genius ; during eighteen centuries, pre- 
ceded by traditions and works for four thousand years, 


it follows your steps, never leaving one of your 


76 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


reproaches unanswered, any more than one of your 
wants unsuccoured. If you deny, it affirms; if you 
despise, it honours ; if you trample it under your feet, 
it rises up again; 1f you believe it dead, it comes back 
again to life. Isit wrong? I cannot say. Is it right? 
I know not. What I see, what all the world sees, is 
that it reasons and keeps the human mind in suspense. 
Sometimes the political authority has served it, some- 
times it has ignored it; but in good as well as in bad 
fortune, under persecution as under protection, it has 
done its work and held on its way. None of the 
vicissitudes which it has witnessed have astonished it 
—ait has seen the science of the times which ended with 
that of the times which began, and it will be accused 
of all, save of having been wanting in greatness and 
power of mind. 

As much as the other religions have been incapable, 
I do not say of sanctifying, but of ameliorating public 
morals, so much has this religion raised and divinised 
them. Who will compare the life of the Christian 
nations with the life of the nations governed by the law 
of idols, or by that of Mahomet? Ah! doubtless I 
know the failings of Christendom, since I know my 
own; but notwithstanding the traces which flesh and 


blood leave upon it, what purity in numbers of chosen 


Intercourse between God and Man. aa 


souls! What respect for virtue in the conscience of 
all! What a struggle in those even who fall, and who 
with their eyes fixed upon the model of all holiness, 
retain even in vice the hope and desire to become 
better! If the secret of this salutary labour is not 
sufficiently known to you by your own experience, if 
the history of souls in Christianity has not been 
revealed to you, judge at least from what you see ; 
compare the pleasures, the amusements, the speéc- 
tacles of the heathens with ours; place before your 
eyes our weaknesses and the abominations of the 
East. Christianity has not destroyed evil, since 
evil forms a part of fallen human nature; but it 
has dishonoured it in opinion, driven ‘it from the 
public places, pursued it even to its repairs, at- 
tenuated it in the life of the greater number, and 
effaced it from the hearts of many. It is the 
only religion which has wrought a moral revolution 
in the world; all the others have adored the 
evil inclinations of man, or ineffectually proscribed 
them. And that moral revolution is not of an age or 
a nation; from the debaucheries of Augustus to the 
adulteries of Louis XIV, it has reigned over a multitude 
of nations which daily feel the persevering benefit it 


confers upon them. ‘There is not a Christian mother 


78 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


who is not its instrument, and who does not commu- 
nicate a virtue of purification and honour to the souls 
whom she has received from God. Before the Chris- 
tian becomes corrupted he has passed by the joys of 
purity, and he preserves in his bones a remembrance 
of it, which all the profanations of vice are unable 
entirely to eradicate. Vice is so incompatible with 
the Christian faith, that that faith grows weak and 
languishes in those who will no longer combat their 
passions, and, under this head, unbelief is one of 
the most glorious crowns of Christianity. Neither the 
Mussulman nor the heathen need to apostatise in 
order to be tranquil in the opprobrium of their 
senses: the Christian alone has a God who forces 
him to blush. 

And yet this God became man, he bore a flesh like 
our own; he was similar in his body to the idols of 
nations, and differing from all who had preceded him, 
and from all who should follow him, he has exercised 
upon earth a regenerating power. In him as in their 
source, in his form as in their centre, are reflected all 
the characters which have made of Christianity an 
incomparable monument. Lift up your eyes now: 
behold Jesus Christ! Who among you will blaspheme 


against him without a certain fear that he may err? 


Intercourse between God and Man. 79 


On emerging from infancy, perhaps, at the age when 
the eyes measure nothing because they as yet have 
compared nothing, you may pass before him without 
halting or bowing your head ; but wait a little. The 
shadows of life will increase behind you; you will 
know man, and returning from man to Christ with 
regards more humble, because they will have seen 
more, you will begin to discover in that physiognomy 
signs which will trouble you. A day will come when 
you will say to yourselves: Is God really there ? What- 
ever may be the answer, your conscience will have 
asked the question. And what a question! What a 
man must he be who constrains another man to propose 
to himself the question of his divinity! And even 
should you not feel the presentiment of that doubt, 
think that for eighteen centuries it moves and divides 
mankind. Now more than ever it is the great question 
of the world. Behind the political quarrels which 
resound so loudly, there is another which is the true 
and the last—it is whether the nations civilised by 
Christianity will abandon the principle which has made 
them what they are, whether they will reach the point 
of apostacy, and what will be theirlot. To be or not 
to be Christian, such is the enigma of the modern 


world. And however you may solve it in your minds, 


80 Two Objections against the Supernatural 


it exists, and I leave it there. It exists, Jesus Christ 
reigns by that doubt suspended over our destinies, as 
much as by the faith of those who have given him their 
whole soul. His divinity is the knot of the future, 
as it was of the past, and were it but a ruin, itis a 
ruin that bears all. We know what has become of 
the nations which have been converted from paganism 
to the gospel; we are ignorant of what would become 
of the Christian nations on the departure of the gospel 
which has nourished and formed them. For we see 
no doctrine ready to receive them, but an abyss where 
matter would sit down alone upon the vacant throne 
of God. 

All these things, Gentlemen, require but one look— 
they are seen and felt as quickly as light is seen and 
warmth is felt. As it is impossible to confound life 
with death, it is impossible to confound Christianity 
with the false systems which have corrupted its tradi- 
tions. Far from being obscured by the disfigurations 
which human liberty has formed, Christianity draws 
from them proof that it is indestructible and inevitable, 
and consequently divine. It remains so much the 
more great as it is brought into comparison, so much 
the more alone as it has rivals, so much the more easy 


to recognise as it ought to be discerned. Were there 


Intercourse between God and Man. SI 


a thousand luminaries in the firmament of religion as 
in that of nature, the eye discerns there only one 
sovereign luminary. He who denies the sun is mate- 


rially blind, he who denies Christianity is spiritually 
blind. 


THE NEED OF SUPERNATURAL 
INTERCOURSE BETWEEN GOD AND MAN. 


, omer) 
a * ae 
pt ieee | 


sy i i, 
i | 
vy a “4 “5 


mh 


is 


Ga S59 


THE NEED OF SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE 
BETWEEN GOD AND MAN. 


My Lorp,—GENTLEMEN, 

WE have made a great advance. We required to 
know whether, in the intercourse between man and 
God, there existed an order of relations superposed 
upon the order of nature and reason. We have proved 
that such an order existed, since mankind, in all times 
and places, acts as if it were real. Afterwards, in 
replying to an objection drawn from the want of 
unity which the supernatural order presents in the 
mass of positive religions that divide the world, we - 
have shown that in fact it was adulterated by the free 
action of man—which, however, 1s unable anywhere to 
destroy it—so that we have here in favour of truth the 
testimony of error itself. For error, notwithstanding 
its corrupting power, not only has not destroyed the 
supernatural form of the religious establishment, but 


it has in no greater degree attained to the point of 
G 2 


86 Lhe Need of Supernatural [ntercourse 


giving a specious character of divinity to false 
religions. Christianity alone possesses a superhuman 
physiognomy which imposes upon the mind examina- 
tion and respect; alone it appears between man and 
God as the possible expression of their relations. 

That done, Gentlemen, the question of the super- 
natural order is not exhausted; we have only 


considered its outer side, and rationalism calls us 


within. Rationalism asks what is meant by an order 


* superior to nature and reason—an order which sup- 
poses that the intelligence is deprived of what is 
needful in order to know, and the will of what is 
needful in order to act. When Omar was consulted as 
to what was to be done with the Alexandrian library, 
he replied: “Either the books of the Alexandrian 
library say the same thing as the Koran, in which 
case they should be burned as useless; or they 
say what the Koran does not say, and in that case 
they should be burned as dangerous.” So also, either 
the supernatural order blends with the light and 
activity of the natural order, and then what end does 
it serve?—or it does not, and then, being unintelligible 
to reason, irreconcilable with nature, what further end 
does it serve? What motive, moreover, could have 


moved God to refuse to our inner organization the 


eed eek = ———— _ 


Between God and Man. 87 


unity ‘which he has placed in all his works, and to 
form for us a mind which, in order to fulfil its function, — 
needs to be perfected by. something from without ? 

In a word, the very notion of the supernatural order 
is disputed ; it is accused of introducing into the plan 
of creation a motive, at the very least arbitrary and 
superfluous. Now in the name of the Church I affirm 
that this motive is necessary—absolutely necessary— 
supposing that God has willed to give us full knowledge 
and full possession of himself, as from the beginning 
of things he has in fact willed and prepared. I shall 
prove this for the one and the other elements of the 
supernatural order — that is to say, for Prophecy, 
which is the complement of our inner light ; and for 
Sacrament, which is the complement of our free 
activity. | 

When we consider the intellectual labour accom- 
plished by man here below, we cannot refrain from a 
feeling of stupor and wonder. Placed upon this 
earth, as upon an island whose ocean is heaven, 
man has willed to know the route by which he is to 
pass ; but innumerable barriers raised up around him 
have opposed his design, and forbade him to take 
“possession of his empire and his exile. The sea 


opposed to him the jealousy of its waves; he looked 


88 The Need of Supernatural [ntercourse 


upon the sea and passed over it. The prow of his 
genius has touched the most inaccessible shores ; he 
has explored and examined them, and after a few 
centuries of daring, more stubborn even than tempests, 
peacefully ruling the waves, he travels where and when 
he wills upon the subjected surface of their immensity. 
He sends his orders to all the shoals now become his 
ports ; by commerce, which will never cease, he draws 
from them the luxury and pride of his life, blending 
all climates, how distant soever they may be, to make 
of them but one single servant obeying his will at 
every point of the globe. 

Another sea, greater and deeper still, a treasure of 
infinite mysteries, spread out over his head its waves 
peopled with stars. He, a simple shepherd then, 
wandering after his flocks in the fields of Chaldea, 
observed the heavens through the pure nights of 
the East. Aided by silence, he named the stars, 
learned their course, penetrated the secret of their 
obscurity, foretold their disappearance and _ their 
return; and all that luminous army, as if it had 
received its orders from the eyes of man, has never 
failed to appear in an exact cycle at the rendezvous 
where the observer waited for them. Even the star 


which appears but once in many centuries has not 


Between God and Man. 89 


been able to hide its course from us; called forth at 
an hour fixed, it emerges from those unspeakable 
depths where no vision follows it—it comes, it shines 
at the point marked for it in our horizon, and, saluting 
with its light the intelligence which had foretold its 
appearance, returns back to the solitudes where the 
Infinite alone never loses sight of it. 

But between earth and heaven—between the abode 
of man and the abode of the stars—a space intervenes 
different from both, less subtile than the one, less 
dense than the other, inhabited by winds and storms, 
and penetrating by its active influence all the springs 
of our life. Man has recognised those invisible 
companions of his being ; he has decomposed the air 
which he breathes, and seized the gradations of the 
fluid which gives him light ; the quickness of the one 
has no more escaped him than the weight of the other. 
In vain the thunder—that striking image of divine 
omnipotence—appeared to defy the boldness of his 
investigations ; like a giant who has vanquished all 
around him, and is indignant against every obstacle, 
he has struggled hand to hand with this terrible array 
of the powers of nature, and, more than ever master, 
he has treated the thunderbolt like a child in leading- 


strings, causing it to halt respectfully on the summits 


90 «6 The Need of Supernatural [Intercourse 


of palaces and temples, forcing it to descend by 
inoffensive routes to the silent abyss of the earth. 
Earth, sea, heaven and all its luminaries, air and all 
its wonders, nothing within or without has been able 
to hide from the mind of man; observation revealed 
facts to him, and facts led him to causes and laws. 
And those particular sciences, rays diffused from a 
common centre, drew together and became enlight- 
ened in a more general science, which, in developing 
the abstract mysteries of number, extent, and motion, 
unveiled before us the eternal elements of all created 
things. 

But is this all? Has the king of the world stopped 
there? Beware of believing it. Had he not 
advanced further, he would already have been poet, 
scholar, artist—already man, but not divine man. 
Now he was divine, and all the visible worlds did not 
possess in themselves the means of satisfying his 
intelligence, and of giving repose to his heart. He 
mounted higher; he asked himself what there is 
beyond the stars, what that orb is which moves all 
those orbs measured by his compass, and he replied 
—the Infinite. For the finite, not containing itself, 
can be limited only by the infinite. But what is the 


infinite? Is it an empty space unceasingly enlarging 


Between God and Man. QI 


before itself, a boundless abyss calling: to itself, in 
order to give them place, all real and all possible life 
without being itself living? Man, who had surveyed 
the sea and the heavens, fearlessly surveyed that other 
heaven and that other sea; whatever the nature of 
the intellectual space wherein his thought dilated 
above all sensible things, he comprehended that the 
principle of being, life, and movement, was not there. 
He advanced beyond it; he left the imaginary infinite 
to contemplate face to face the real infinite, and 
seeing, without fully seeing it, defining, without fully 
defining it, he exclaimed with a voice which was the 
first, and will be the last : 
Beyond the heavens, the God of heaven dwells ! 

Behold me, Gentlemen, behold me trembling before 
the greatness of man ; just now he shook but the dust 
from his feet, and see, he touches God! 

And yet is there not some trace of sadness in your 
soul? Is there in your intelligence nothing obscure 
and unknown? In the palmy days of Greece there 
once lived a sage who served his country with his 
sword, whilst at the same time he served it by lessons 
which merited the honour of preparing human wisdom 
to bend before the Gospel of divine wisdom. Socrates 


—for it was he—one morning went out of his tent, 


92 The Need of Supernatural [ntercourse 


sat down before it, and with his head resting upon his 
hands remained thoughtful. The sun rose, the army 
was in motion, the coursers passed by, all the noise of 
a camp surrounded his reverie; but he remained 
motionless, and, as it were, enraptured out of himself, 
and it was evening before he had power or thought to 
remember his head weighing upon his knees. What 
was the subject of that great man’s thoughts? What 
painful mystery was able to hide time from him and 
fill up the space of so lengthened a meditation ? Alas! 
Gentlemen, the same mystery that troubles you, and 
that brings you here. Without wishing now to insult 
your reason after having so highly exalted it, may I not 
ask with Socrates: What do you know? May [ not 
ask you, the children of sages, the question which he 
addressed to the sages of his time? Have the twenty 
centuries that have passed since Socrates changed the 
condition of the human mind, and brought down upon 
you the plentitude of light which was wanting to the 
master of Plato? A light, indeed, a great light has 
shone upon the world since the mouth of Socrates 
was closed by a draught of hemlock ; but it came from 
Calvary, and not from reason. Those who have not 
received it in the obedience of faith, so far from being 


enlightened by it, have seen the gloom and uncertainty 


Between God and Man. 93 


of their ideas increasing ; for a formidable question for 
them has been added to all the questions that perplex 
our understanding. I say to you then, without fear 
of contradicting myself or of offending you, There is 
something which you know not, when in order to know 
it you interrogate only your own intelligence. Philoso- 
pher or peasant, transcribing with a golden pen pages 
which will fill posterity with immortal incense, or 
obscure labourer in a life without morrow, whoever 
you may be, there is a thing which you know not. 
What you know, I have declared; what you know not 
is yourselves, your soul, the reason of your soul, your 
destiny. You know all, except the secret of your life. 
I do not yet seek the reason of this, I expose the fact, 
Is your soul imperishable in its nature? Why is it 
united to a body? Why does it withdraw from that 
body at a certain moment? Whither does it go on 
leaving its prison of a day? What is death? What 
is that place to which your fathers have gone, where 
they wait for you, that place which calls you, which 
tells you by the voice of Bossuet, that the ranks are 
crowded there? Do you know with any certainty ? 
Do you know better than Socrates, placed by injustice 
face to face with the future, and drawing from his con- " 


demnation a new assurance of our immortality ? 


94. Lhe Necd of Superiatural [Intercourse 


If I consult the history of human wisdom, I see it 
arriving at this mystery by all its roads, but by very 
different roads. Plato affirms, Cicero doubts, Epicurus 
denies, and the human mind constantly dilates in these 
three zones of thought. Would it, after ages of faith, 
restore in modern times the independent philosophy ? 
Descartes begins by affirmation, Bayle continues by 
doubt, Voltaire ends by negation. Less than two 
centuries are needed by philosophical activity to ac- 
complish that fatal cycle, the result of which is what 
you see, that is to say, a society without certain belief, 
divided by a thousand opinions, each of which claims 
to be true, each of which has its heralds, its hopes, its 
reverses, and which, disputing in order to build up, 
meet together but to destroy! The Greeks presented 
its spectacle to the world, the Romans renewed it, and 
we, two thousand years after the lesson of these ruins, 
choose to receive from ourselves their formidable 
teaching. It is before you, Gentlemen; examine it ; 
learn from it at least the limit of your intelligence, and 
the need which you have of another light than yours 
to know your own selves. 

But whence comes to us this ignorance of our own 
destinies? Whence comes it that, having penetrated 


so far and mounted so high in the mysteries of nature, 


, 
} 
7 


Between God and Man. 95 


our sight grows dim when we exercise it upon what is 
intimate and personal to ourselves? It is not difficult 
to understand the reason. All the phenomena of 
nature are facts present before our eyes, and the 
mathematical laws which govern them, besides that 
they are manifested in perceptible and limited bodies, 
appertain to the invariable essence of things, which is 
present to our mind, and constitutes the intelligible 
light with which it is enlightened. The divine Being 
himself reveals himself to us by the universe, which, 
all great though it be, constrains us to seek for it a 
cause, a cause which can only be the infinite in a state 
of personality, that is to say, God. We thus hold the 
two ends of the chain, the finite and the infinite, the 
world and God. But when it is a question of 
penetrating the secret of our destiny, all our natural 
means of knowledge fail us. Our destiny is not a 
phenomenon present to our observation ; it embraces 
a past invisible to us, a future alike invisible. Nor 
is it a law belonging to the essence of things, since 
we may be or not be—live for a day or a thousand 
years. Our destiny is a revelation between two free 
beings, one of whom is finite and the other infinite. 
It depends upon the concurrence of two wills dif. - 


ferently sovereign, one of which has given what it 


96 ©The Need of Supernatural [Intercourse 


did not owe, the other is able to refuse what it did 
not expect. 

Now how are we reasonably to know the will of 
another? How is reason to attain to an inner and a 
necessary perception of an act which may be or not 
be? Doubtless God has in his nature immutable rules 
of justice and goodness, whose reflection enlightens 
our conscience and places us on the road of his 
operations. But neither justice nor goodness impose © 
upon him, in regard to his gifts, a measure absolutely 
determined. He was free to create or not to create, 
free to call us into life sooner or later, free to unite 
himself to us more or less durably and intimately. 
Who would say, for example, that the alliance of the 
divine ‘nature with human nature by the incarnation 
was metaphysically necessary? Now if it were not 
necessary, it was free; and being free, how would the 
intelligence have perceived it otherwise than under the 
form of a simple possibility? And it is the possibility 
even which makes the mystery. Behold me, a living 
being, behold me in presence of the eternity which my 
mind discovers all around me as the natural horizon of 
my being: am I there for an hour, for a century, for 
ever? Is eternity, which is my principle, also my 


right and my object? If I saw clearly that it is not, 


Letween God and Man. Q7 


there would then be no mystery ; if I saw clearly that 
it is, there would be no greater mystery ; but I hesitate 
before the affirmation and the negation, because both 
are possible. ‘That which is necessary is visible, that 
which is possible is but dimly perceptible. That 
which is necessary is like the day, that which is possible 
is but as the night. Who is to solve the doubt? Who 
will say to us of two contradictory things equally 
realisable, This is realised, that is the real? Reason 
cannot, for reason could do this only by changing that 
which is possible into that which is necessary, which 
is absurd. I declare that between what is necessary 
and what is possible, stands the probable; but the 
probable does not give certainty, it inclines the mind 
without subjugating it. Socrates died avenging himself 
towards his judges by the hope of immortality, and 
the Phzedo is the imperishable memorial of that heroic 
vengeance: but what sufficed for the remorse of his 
judges and the greatness of his soul, did not suffice for 
the consolation of his friends. Another death than 
that of a sage, another language than that of a man, 
was to give to the human race the certainty of its 
immortality. 

But immortality is not all; many things therein still. 


remain obscure, and were it even assured, the mind 


98 The Need of S upernatural Intercourse 


would still ask—What is immortality? Shall we see 
God in it? Shall we see him there face to face ? 
Will it be for our transformed vision what the 
yesterday of nature is for our mortal vision? ‘The 
abyss of the infinite is fathomless, and this is the 
second cause of the powerlessness of reason to render 
an exact account to itself of the last ends of man, as 
Christianity eloquently calls the dogma of his destinies. 
In every other science the question rises from the 
finite to the fnite, Even mathematics are but the 
general laws of bodies, and if they are considered 
in an abstract manner, inasmuch as they subject 
undetermined quantities to their calculation, they 
attain to nothing beyond the indefinite—that is 
to say, beyond a supposed progression constantly 
increasing Or decreasing, to which unity serves as a 
starting point. But in the science of the last ends of 
man, the question rises from nothingness to the 
infinite. It is a question of knowing whether death 
brings us back again into existence, or leads us to 
eternity ; whether we are a simple phenomenon 
measured by time, or a luminary emanated from God 
to return to him again ; and what is the law of that 
curve which we describe round the centre, which is 


our principle and our end. Even, putting aside the 


Between God and Man. 99 


intention of God towards us, an intention evidently 
not to be sounded by reason, as I have just shown, 
there still remains the difficulty as to the infinite 
considered in itself. Saint Thomas of Aquinas has 
said— Truth is the equation between the intelligence 
and its object.” Now how can a finite intelligence be 
in equation with an object which is not finite? And 
if that equation be impossible, how should we of 
ourselves possess truth in regard to God and to our 
relations with him? We are able to affirm that God 
is, because our mind, superior to the universe, 
discovers therein the need of a cause superior to it. 
We can also affirm that that cause is infinite, because 
if it were not, it would be but another universe, 
equally incapable as the first of subsisting of itself. 
But our mind, although superior to the universe, is not 
equal to God; it floats between two extremes, 
surpassing the one, surpassed by the other, and 
not even knowing entirely that which is beneath 
its sphere; because the total knowledge of the 
phenomenon would require the total knowledge of 
the cause, which is God. God, says the Scriptures, 
dwells in znaccessible ight; he is, at the same time, 
that which is most clear, and that which is most 


impenetrable. Remove the idea which we have of 


il 


100 The Need of Supernatural Intercourse 


him, all light disappears from our understanding ; 
truth becomes only a dream, and justice a name. 
But, also, would we penetrate the divine essence to its 
very depths, our eyes grow dim, and we perceive in 
immeasurable distance only a sparkling that dazzles 
tis, and veils light from us by light itself. For 
example, would we study the metaphysical nature of 
God, we ask—Is God a solitary being, or does he 
possess relations in himself? Whatever may be the 
answer, it is a-mystery. Would we study his moral 
nature, we ask—What, in God, is the proportion of 
justice and goodness? Whatever may be the reply, 
we must reply again by another mystery. And, yet, 
if I ignore these things, can I possibly know the law 
of my relations with God? Can I know what Il 
ought to fear, or what I ought to hope? 

Perhaps you will say to me: But why has God not 
given us a more penetrating mind? Ah! Gentlemen, 
whatever penetration he might have given us, would it 
ever have equalled the profundity of his essence, 
which is infinite? Would it have answered to the 
definition of Saint Thomas of Aquinas—‘‘Truth is an 
equation between the intelligence and its object?” 
You have but two courses open to you, either to deny 


that definition, or to maintain that God had power to 


Between God and Man. IOL 


create spirits, his equals—that is to say, God. In 
the first case, it is to affirm that the effect might be 
greater than its cause; in the second, that that which 
exists by another, nevertheless exists of itself. Yield, 
therefore, to evidence, and no longer contest against 
Christianity that great and powerful truth, that no 
created intelligence 1s of itself capable of attaining to 
a perfect knowledge of God, and, consequently, to 
a certain knowledge of its destiny. History proves 
this to you, and reasoning has just confirmed history 
by explaining it to you. 

What then is wanting, in order that man may know 
himself and God? <A mediating ight must interpose 
between God and himself—a light which should aid 
his nature without destroying it, which should draw 
him near to the infinite without being itself the 
infinite. And if that mediation seems impossible to 
you, give me your attention yet a moment longer. 

You to whom I speak are a soul, and I who speak 
to you am a soul also. Now do you know my soul 
and do I know yours? The infinite is not between 
us, and yet, although by our bodies we touch each 
other, an abyss separates us. What are you, and 
what am I? What is the hidden motor of our 


actions? Whence do we tend by our weaknesses 


H 2 


102 The Need of Supernatural Intercourse 


and by our virtues? What is our degree of power 
in good and in evil? I repeat, What are you. and 
what am I? You see plainly in my actions, and I 
see in yours, a certain reflection of what we are 
inwardly ; physiognomy adds its revelation to that of 
our works, but can you say that you know me as I 
know myself, and can I persuade myself that I see 
you as you see yourself? The soul ignores the soul, 
inasmuch as their essence is not seen by a direct 
vision. There is but one remedy for this evil, namely, 
confidence or confession—that is to say, the opening 
of the soul to the soul by means of sincere language. 
Language is the mediating light between equal things 
which are unseen; by a stronger reason is it, also, 
between things doubly separated by their invisibility 
and by their inequality. Why should not God speak 
to man? Why, seeing us incapable of attaining to 
him by the feebleness of our nature, should he not 
condescend to unveil himself to us in a confidence 
which would reveal to us, with the mysteries of his 
being, the order of his thoughts and designs? I 
have proved to you that this supernatural or prophetic 
revelation was necessary to the intercourse between 
man and God, and I have just shown you the instru- 


ment of this revelation in language. I will terminate 


Between God and Man. 10% 


this conference by proving also to you the necessity 
of sacrament, not to enlighten the mind, but to 
strengthen the will—not to teach us our destiny, but 
to help us to fulfil it. 

The mind is the remote principle of our actions, 
the will is their immediate principle ; the mind sees, 
the will commands, man acts. What is it then to act ? 
To act is to produce something. If you have pro- 
duced nothing—if no result has been the fruit of 
your will, you have done nothing ; it is the expression 
consecrated by language itself. Therefore man never 
moves but to produce, and each of his movements, 
even when it is abortive, still produces something, 
were it only noise. But why does he produce? Why 
is not man in a state of repose? What does he seek 
in that incessant production which is the effect of his 
activity? What he seeks is life. If he breathes it is 
to live ; if he digs the earth, it is to live; if he walks, 
it is to live; if he sleeps, it is to live; if he dies, it 
is still to lve. And he never rests, because life 
escapes from him in proportion as he produces it. 
He drinks it from a parsimonious cup, which contains 
and affords but one drop at a time. To halt is to 
die. But to die!—did I not say just now that to 


die was still to live! Yes, in the truth of our 


104. The Need of Supernatural Intercourse 


destinies death is the high-road of life, provided we 


have known the secret of the course on which we 


act, which is to produce in ourselves the very life of 


God—a life full, stable, each instant of which 
includes eternity, and which has no more need to 
produce itself, because it is. This is the true and 
final object of all our actions. I have demonstrated 
it to you in showing you that God is our principle and 
our end. Whatever you may do, if you do not this 
you will do nothing. If you do not this you are but 
like the herdsman who sits down on the bank of a 
flowing stream and beats the wave as it passes, 
pleased with the noise which he himself causes. 
The present life, when it is not the instrument of the 
eternal life, has no other form, and is nothing more 
worth. In vain will you clothe it with the consul’s 
purple ; in vain will you call it glory, power, mmor- 
tality—illustrious names which elevate nothingness 
only to exhibit it from a higher place and to a greater 
distance. History is full of these extinguished 
beacons, famous mortals who, because they conquered 
for a day the admiration of this world, esteemed 
themselves great in life, and expected from their 
tomb a persevering reign. Do this if you will. 


Build up pyramids for yourselves in the devastated 


Between God and Man. 105 


solitudes of memory; surround your death with 
moats and barriers against time ; eternity will permit 
you, as it permits the child who totters in his first 
efforts to reach the arms of his nurse that he may feel 
proud of being greater there than on his feet. 

But if these puerilities wound you, if you are 
ashamed of adding ridicule to nothingness, consider 
that it is a question of producing in yourselves the 
life of God, and seek in your nature if you can find 
there the instrument of such exalted ambition. 

The life of God is infinite; it consists in the 
perpetuity of an indivisible moment in which God, 
one and many, beholds himself fully in his essence 
and loves himself fully in his persons. Now we are 
totally incapable of such life. Subject as we are by 
our nature to succession and change, we cannot 
aspire to the indefectible state of immutable duration ; 
neither are we more able to behold the Divine Being 
face to face, nor to love him with that perfect love 
which, in himself, results from the direct vision of 
his ineffable beauty. If we behold him, it is through 
the obscurity of ideas; if we love him, it is as the 
invisible principle of the incomplete blessings by 
which we are surrounded. But to behold him in 


his substance, to love him with that regard which 


106 Lhe Need of Supernatural Intercourse 


possesses the object loved, to become blended so 
completely in him as to feel only the steady move- 
ment of his eternal life, is a prodigy so far beyond 
our power to perform that faith alone gives us the 
certainty of its future accomplishment. Reason 
laughs at that hope, so much does it feel incapable 
of realizing it. For reason, the most glorious future 
of man is immortality ; that is to say, the attainment 
by the soul of a duration which the senses could no 
longer measure—a life the ideas of which alone 
would fill indefinite space. Or if reason pass beyond 
this, it casts to us the dreams of pantheism, boasting 
that it creates God for us on condition that we 
lose ourselves in the abstract immensity of being. 
Christianity has marked our place between these 
excesses ; knowing that God is our end, it commands 
us to begin to live imperfectly in him, in order one 
day to live there in the fulness of vision, which, 
without confounding us with the divine essence, 
will give it to us as the present object of direct know- 
ledge and of love in possession. 

Now, whether in its initial or its final form, that 
divine life—I have just shown it—surpasses the forces 
of all mortal nature. As there is no natural equation 


possible between a limited intelligence and a truth 


Between God and Man. 107 


not limited, so also there can exist no possible natural 
equation between the life of a finite being and that 
of an infinite being. If, then, God calls us to his 
eternity, if our destiny is to live by him, in him, and 
with him, he must necessarily communicate to our 
soul a mediatorial element, by means of which it may 
be raised above its own limits, and borne towards him 
by a movement of a supernatural or divine order. Our 
present life is the painful crucible from whence our 
future life should flow; if only matter be found there, 
even were it the most precious, nothing but mire will 
come from it ; if spirit only be found there, even were it 
the most penetrating, nothing would result but human 
ideas and sentiments. Let God then intervene, let him 
pour in the gold of his eternity, or, to speak plainly, 
let him attract us towards himself by a direct action 
upon our souls; let him draw us without violence 
from the affections of nature, and inspire us with such 
a love that the present life may appear to us only as 
a burden, and this earth but a place of exile. 

This love exists, you cannot deny it. David exhaled 
it in his Psalms, the martyrs embalmed their sufferings 
with it, the saints have lauded and glorified it from 
generation to generation : all, in different modes, have 


poured forth before God the melancholy of souls 


108 The Need of Supernatural [niercourse 


oppressed by the workings of superhuman love. 
As the hart, said they, panteth after the fountains of 
water, so my soul panteth after thee, O God! My soul 
had thirsted after the strong and living God, when shall 
I come and appear before the face of God. My tears 
have been my bread day and night, whilst it is said to 
me daily; Where is thy God? These things I 
remembered and I poured out my soul within me, for 
I shall go over to the place of the wonderful tabernacle, 
even to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, 
with the noise as of one feasting. Why art thou sad, 
O my soul, and why dost thou trouble me? Lope in 
God, for I will still give praise to him because he ts the 
help of my countenance and my God. ‘These accents 
are not of earth—they rise from hearts delivered from 
time, and which began already really to inhabit the 
region which gives a distaste for all the rest. But how 
did they reach that region? Is it by the natural effect 
of intellectual contemplation, or of a movement of 
enthusiasm? Assuredly not, and never, either in 
Orpheus or Plato, or in any mind possessing only the 
spirit of man, have such vibrations moved the sanctuary 
of our sensibility. They proceed from an art unknown 
to genius, from a tradition which reveals its secrets only 


2Psalm xli. 


Between God and Man. inele) 


to saints. Interrogate the saints; they are not jealous 
of their gifts, freely they have received them, freely will — 
they give them to you. They will tell you whence they 
derive that painful but hallowed life which draws them 
above the world. Look yonder: under the shelter of 
a chiselled stone, under the still more lowly symbol of 
bread kneaded by man, lives the hidden virtue that 
gives holiness, and, with holiness, produces and fertilises 
in the soul the germ of the divine life. What prophecy 
is for the intelligence, sacrament is for the will. 
Prophecy reveals to us the impenetrable mysteries of 
the essence and mind of God; sacrament communicates 
to us the spirit, the desire, and the hunger for God, 
the right to possess him by grace, since we cannot by 
nature, and even a real foretaste of that possession. 

If the experience of the saints does not suffice for 
you, consult the opposite experience. You who have 
only the heart wherewith to love God, as you have 
only reason wherewith to know him, do you love God? 
I do not ask you if you love him with tender and 
profound love, better than you love your dearest 
friends, better than a mother loves her son, better than 
all things and yourselves—not from the spectacle of 
visible blessings of which he is the author, but from- 


an anticipated contemplation of the personal beauty 


110 The Need of Supernatural Intercourse 


that is in him. I do not ask you whether you love 
him so as to be able to address to him some of those 
accents which David has just lent us. But do you 
love him with the faintest and most feeble love? Are 
your thoughts always turned towards him? Have you 
any secret pleasure in him? Does he form a part, 
how small soever it may be, of the treasure of your 
heart? JI venture to say, no, and that the falling leaf 
which the wind bears along touches you more than the 
immensity of the divine perfections. 

Seneca has said, AMICITIA PARES INVENIT VEL FACIT 
—Friendship finds or makes equals. Such is the reason 
of your coldness towards God; you know that he is 
infinite, and you do not conceive what there can be 
between himself and you. He is in his place, and you 
are in yours ; you ask from him only forgetfulness, and 
you give to him but the same thing which you ask 
from him. And never, by the sole effort of nature, will 
you rise from that state of insensibility. Nature will 
inspire you with ardent passions, or even with heroic 
affections, but for the things that are felt and for 
beauties seen; nature will prostrate you before a little 
dust; it will make of that dust the soul of your 
existence, your life itself, so that you would be ready 


to die, if, in a last embrace, you lost that precious gift 


Between God and Man. — ° jee! 


of love to which you have a thousand times vowed 
immortality. You would do even more, you would 
die for a beloved object; you would die joyfully, 
offering to that object your last sigh as a holocaust of 
eternal adoration. All this you are able to do, when 
God is not in question; but if God be in question, 
that great faculty of loving dies within you, and your 
heart, so prompt for all the rest, refuses the infinite. 
If you loved nothing, we should have but to pity you; 
being loving by nature, and placing in it the felicity of 
your short life, we must wonder to see you insensible 
to God, and conclude therefrom that something is 
wanting to you in order to attain that supreme 
affection. A sage has just told you what is wanting 
to you. As Saint Thomas of Aquinas has defined 
truth—an equation between the intelligence and its object, 
Seneca, with a precision not less eloquent, has defined 
love—a fusion which finds or makes equals. Now as 
no equality exists between God and us, it is for him to 
lean towards his creature by a movement of grace, 
and divinely to attract that creature to a life.common 
with himself. If we consent, it is our merit and our 
salvation ; if we do not consent, it is our fault as well 
as our ruin. 


These truths which I endeavour to demonstrate to 


112 Lhe Need of Supernatural [Intercourse 


you, were one day announced by Saint Paul before a 
Roman proconsul and a king of the East, assembled 
more from curiosity to hear him than from desire to 
know the ways of God. After having related to them 
the madness of his youth against Jesus Christ, and 
how he whom he had persecuted had appeared to him 
at the gates of Damascus to confide to him the Gospel 
of nations, he thus continued his discourse: But beng 
aided by the help of God, I stand up unto this day 
witnessing both to small and great, saying no other thing 
than those whith the prophets and Moses did say should 
come to pass, namely, that Christ should suffer, and that 
he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and 
should show light to the people and to the Gentiles. 
Here the proconsul interrupted him, and with a loud 
voice cried out to him, Zhou art mad, Paul! And 
Paul, unmoved, replied, 7 am not mad, most excellent 
Festus, but I speak words of truth and soberness, and 
the king before whom I speak knoweth of these things, none 
of which were hidden from him, or were done in a 
corner. Then turning towards the king, he said, Az 
Asrippa, believest thou the prophets? L know that 
thou believest? And the king answered, Lawl, almost 


thou persuadest me to be a Christian. Gentlemen, the 


3 Acts xxvi. 22 and foll. 


Between God and Man. 113 


same dialogue is now passing between your soul and 
mine; neither the truths nor the hearers have changed. 
There are here many, like Festus, puffed up in the 
pride of reason, to whom the history of their own 
weakness is unknown, and who, having never felt any 
need of the help of God, marvel that it is necessary 
to treat with him otherwise than as equal to equal. 
These say to me, Zhou art mad, Paul/ But there 
are also those, who, like Agrippa, more infatuated by 
their passions than by their knowledge, secretly 
warned of the misery of man, sometimes lift their eyes 
towards the omnipotent goodness which has made 
them. These say to me, Almost thou persuadest me to 
bea Christian. AndI, making no distinction between 
either—between those who are near and those who 
are further away—confiding in him who has died for 
us all, I say to all, imitating the language of Saint 
Paul, Would to God that you were as Tam/* Would 
to God that, recognising the powerlessness of your 
nature abandoned to itself, you would sing in the 
peace, the joy, the certainty of the children. of God, 


that short and consoling hymn, Crepo—I believe ! 


4 Acts xxvi. 29. 


Pai Weel 


: pane S44 3 
; E heed pe ii 


thy 


ae A? eu) 
aed + ; 


iy DP. Feats 


ery 
yA a 


PROPHECY: 


ii 
ri 


Whig 


oe 
me 
ht 


f 


Neti) 


PROPHECY. 


My Lorp,—GENTLEMEN, 

THE reality and necessity of a supernatural order, 
as a means of communication between man and God, 
having been demonstrated to you, it remains for us to 
penetrate the intimate nature of that order. You have 
already seen that it divides into two acts, one 
corresponding to our faculty of knowing—namely, 
prophecy ; the other, relative to our operative faculty 
—nhamely, sacrament. In causing you more deeply 
to sound the mystery of these two acts, I shall attain 
my object, which is to lead you to a knowledge 
of the supernatural order, as far as its profundity 
and the limits of our mind will permit. I begin by 
prophecy. 

Prophecy is a word of God manifesting truths - 
to man which his reason alone would not have 
attained, and which, however, are necessary for the 


accomplishment of his destiny. 


118 Prophecy. 


That which predominates in this definition is 
language—language is the first prophetic element. 
But what is language 

A man comes into the world. His eyes, his ears, 
his lips—all his senses are closed. He has no idea of 
the nothingness from whence he is emerging, or of 
the being to which he is attaining—he is ignorant of 
himself, and of all the rest with himself. Leave him 
as nature has just sketched him, leave him there 
naked, dumb, dead rather than living; he will live, 
perhaps, but he will live without knowing it, an 
unformed guest of creation, a soul lost in powerlessness 
to find its own life. His eyes will open, but no 
thought will be visible in them, and his heart will beat, 
but no virtue will be felt therein. Happily something 
watches over him. The providence of language 
covers him with its fertile wings—language incessantly 
bends over him, watches him, touches, turns him, 
strives by its vibration to awaken that sleeping soul. 
And at last, after days which have been ages, on a 
sudden, from that dull and insensible abyss, from that 
infant hardly able to express by a smile that he 
understood the love which had placed him in the world, 
language escapes and replies. The man then lives ; 


he thinks, he loves, he names those whom he loves, 


Prophecy. 119 


he renders back to them in language all the love he 
had received from them. 

But this is only the beginning of man. He, the 
predestinated of the Infinite, as yet knows only the 
bosom of his mother, his cradle, his chamber, a few 
pictures hanging on the walls, the space which his eye 
discovers from a window—an hour is for him history, 
a house the universe, a caress the last end of things. 
He must leave this limited horizon and prepare to 
mark his place in that restless society where all, 
having the same rights in the same duties, will dispute 
with him the glory of existence. Soon he will descend 
the staircase of the paternal house, he will appear in 
public, his ears will hear the painful din of clashing 
ambition and contending ideas, and, like a leaf fallen 
upon the waves of a stormy sea, he will, for the first 
time, wonder at the cost of life, and the mysteries 
which it contains. Who will explain them to him ? 
Who, rightly or otherwise, will teach him the science 
of man, that science whose elements are the past, the 
present, the future, earth and heaven, which by one of 
its poles touches nothingness, and by the other the 
infinite? It will still be language, no longer the 
language of his father and his mother, but perilous - 


language, which will, perhaps, stifle within him the 


120 Prophecy. 


germs of truth; which will, perhaps, develop them, 
according to the spirit of the masters who may direct 
his own. For he will have masters ; he cannot escape 
from that second reign which language will exercise 
over him. Language launched him into the world, 
language roused and gave the first course to his ideas : 
whatever he may will, whatever he may do, for his 
nappiness or his misery, language will perform its 
work; it will make of him a vase of faith or of 
unbelief, a victim of pride or of charity, a slave of the 
senses or of duty, and if he always remains free against 
evil, he will, nevertheless, be free on condition of 
calling to his aid the language of better teaching than 
that which had deceived him. 

Such is the history of man; listen now to that of 
the people. <A tribe is found slumbering in barbarism; 
they know not even the first of arts, which is that of 
subjecting the earth to their wants. Like the beasts, 
they live on prey. When they find it they lie down 
and sleep before the fire that warms, or under the tree 
that covers them, until hunger commands them again 
to dispute with the forests, and with chance, their 
precarious subsistence. They have no country. The 
very soil on which they wander has received no 


consecration from their labour, no limit from their 


Prophecy. 121 


power ; and, although it may hold the bones of their 
forefathers, they live there without past or future. If 
attacked, they defend themselves, like wild beasts in 
their lairs, but are unable, even of the staff with 
which they defend themselves, to form either a sword 
or a standard. Idea is wanting to them, and with it, 
virtue, progress, history, stability. 

But behold a change! ‘This people settles ; they 
build tents, they dig out trenches, they place guards, 
they have something durable and holy to watch over. 
A temple offers to them, under a sensible image, the 
God who made the world, the father of justice and 
the indweller of souls. They adore him in spirit, 
they pray to him with faith, The sun no longer 
passes over their heads as a fire which becomes 
extinguished in the evening and is lighted up afresh 
in the morning, but as the grave measure of ages, 
bringing to each day its duty, to each century its 
duration. They count his revolutions, and distribute 
their own history in the cycle wherein all nations have 
included their own. In fine, they live as a nation, 
they reveal their presence by men of name—by acts 
of power. But what has raised them from their 
former lethargy? What has made of that barbarous 


tribe a regular and civilized society? What? 


122 Prophecy. 


Gentlemen! The same power that made the man— 
the power of language. Orpheus came down from 
the mountains of Thracia, he sang, and Greece rose 
up full of life at the sound of his lyre. A missionary 
appeared in the desert with a crucifix imstead of a 
harp; he pronounced the name of God, and the 
savages, simple even to nakedness, covered their 
nascent bashfulness with the leaves of the forest. 
Children smiled at the man who spoke, and mothers: 
believed in lips which brought to their sons the 
blessing of the Great Spirit. 

Shall we contemplate other scenes taken from more 
advanced communities? A people, after having long, 
held with honour the sceptre of their destiny, lost 
little by little the sentiment of great things; they no 
longer knew how to believe, to deliberate, or to devote 

themselves ; they were seen bending over a counter, 
weighing coins in a balance, instead of weighing the 
destinies of the world, having no longer any desire 
beyond the monotonous and senseless clinking of 
money. With abasement of character came servitude; 
tyrants sported with that people and imposed upon 
them laws worthy of their morals. Those tyrants 
found accomplices even in the traditions of liberty, 


and the forum, the tribune, the senate, were names 


Prophecy. 123 


with which they covered the degradation of souls and 
the opprobrium of their tyranny. But whilst this 
corruption and fear reigned over that degenerate race ; 
whilst all was silent save falsehood, calumny, delation, 
baseness of heart and mind, at a moment unlooked 
for, that people awoke and looked around them; 
Domitian has disappeared, Nerva has succeeded him. 
What was it that thus suspended the course of ruins? 
What power recalled, even were it but for a day, 
honourable names and remembrances? Do not ask, 
Gentlemen: language glided between the interstices of 
tyranny ; here and there, as in a field harvested, it met 
with souls who had remained true even in their genera- 
tion, and scattering by them the leaven of the antique 
power, it reanimated the senate, the people, the forum, 
the extinct gods, the fallen majesty, and altogether 
resuscitating at the same time, they gave to the living 
and the dead a sacred and a last apparition of country. 

Beyond a people there is only the human race, and 
perhaps we shall find that the human race also has 
felt the magic power of language. Perhaps also the 
human race, plunged in corruption and servitude, may, 
once in the course of its long history, have felt the 
divine shock of resurrection. If you have forgotten 


it, recall to your minds what the world was at the 


124 Prophecy. 


dawn of the times which we call our own. Endeavour 
in thought to be present at one of those festivals to 
which it bore, at the same time, its gods and its morals, 
its ideas and its joys. Choose the circus or the 
amphitheatre, the games or the mysteries—any scene 
whatever of antiquity. Such was the world! That 
world is no more. Chaste altars prepare generations 
laboriously to restore their senses to their proper 
functions, and the cross, the sign of mortification and 
humility, instead of presenting the slave as a source of 
amusement to cruel and dissolute masters, advances 
before princes to teach them gentleness, before the 
people to give them courage to sustain a grave and 
impoverished existence. Bloodshed no longer excites 
applause, 1f it be not given in a great and voluntary 
sacrifice ; the flesh, dishonoured by the shamelessness 
of the soul, is no longer presented as an object of 
public adoration, and in the very midst of great cities, 
spotless purity has built retreats which are not even 
celebrated, so much is the heart of man raised in the 
knowledge and sentiment of virtue. The. eye no 
longer sees traces of mutilations on the brow of the 
passers-by ; the ear is no longer shocked with the 
abject sound of private executions, and even public 


justice appears but rarely before the respected gaze of 


Prophecy. 125 


citizens. A street is an asylum where creatures meet 
who all bear in themselves the sign of their rights, and 
the visible inequality of conditions in no way takes 
from the poor their place and their dignity. What 
more shall I say? The heart of man is still feeble 
and devoured by passions, and yet mankind is 
transformed; in the very depths of its being it bears 
a germ of good against which no crime can prevail, 
and which condemns to the scorn of all the same 
things which in the ancient world usurped the homage 
of all. What has accomplished this? Yet once more, 
and I grow weary of repeating it, it is language. A 
man came who called himself God, and who said in 
the name of God: Blessed are the poor! Blessed are 
they who weep! Blessed are they who hunger and thirst 
after justice! Blessed are the clean of heart! Blessed 
are they who suffer persecution for justice sake/® He 
said that; and language which makes man, which 
founds civilization, which emancipates nations, that 
same language from the lips of Christ gave a new 
force, or rather a new birth to mankind. 
Hereby it is manifest that language is the highest 
power of the world; that it is the cause of all the 


revolutions, whether good or evil, whose succession 


> St. Matt, v."5 and foll. 


126 Prophecy. 


forms history, and consequently you must not wonder 
to find it an element of the supernatural order, and 
that to prophecy is to speak. 

I have said, moreover, that prophecy is a word of 
God, And here rationalism, which has up to this 
point consented to my discourse, does not permit me 
to advance further. Rationalism considers that the 
idea of God and that of language are two incompatible 
ideas ; that as God is a purely spiritual being and 
language a simple vibration of air caused by the 
physical organs of the voice, we cannot, without 
degrading the Divine Majesty, attribute to it so 
insignificant an operation. 

Is itsnecessary tor «me .to reply ‘to ithis?." Is “it 
necessary for me to show you that they degrade the 
notion of language in order to refuse it to God? Do 
you imagine that air agitated, no matter how, possesses 
the power of obtaining the prodigious effects which I 
have described to you? Doubtless, because of our 
present state in which the soul is united to a body, 
language also has a body ; it occasions an outer action 
which vibrates the air. But this is only the phantom 
of language. Close your eyes, collect yourself, shut 
up your soul within itself. Do you not hear that it 


speaks to you? Do you not hear that without 


Prophecy. jay 


disturbing any physical organ it inwardly articulates 
words, pronounces phrases, forms a discourse within 
you? Do younot hear that it grows animated, ardent, 
eloquent, that it persuades you, and that, nevertheless, 
all is still in the centre and at the extremities of your 
body? Outer language is but the pale and dying 
expression of inner language, and inner language is 
thought itself engendering in the depths of the soul by 
an immaterial fecundity. Were it otherwise—if to 
speak were but to vibrate the air—could you conceive 
that air is the vehicle of ideas and sentiments, that 
it seizes upon your intelligence in its impenetrable 
recesses, and withdraws it from its proper conceptions? 
Language is a spiritual power, united in man to a 
sensible organ, and giving it impulsion, as the soul, 
in the totality of its forces, gives impulsion to the 
whole body. God, who is spint, may then be language, 
he may speak to us inwardly without the utterance of 
any voice heard by the senses, and speak to us 
outwardly if it please him to give his communications 
a character of publicity and authenticity. It is true, 
that in himself God is not united to a body, that 
therefore his language has not an organ naturally and 
personally subject to him; but all nature is more 


obedient towards him than our bodies are to us. 


128 Prophecy. 


* 


Over nature he has the right of the whole creative 
power, and it is as easy for him to use it, as it is for 
us to use the portion of organized matter subject to us. 

As a spiritual power, then, language belongs to 
God. But it belongs to him still more manifestly 
under another point of view. In fact, if, considered 
in its first root, language is no other thing than 
thought making its appearance within and before the 
soul; if it is the intercourse of the soul with itself, it is 
also the faculty by which the soul enters into relations 
with another soul, initiates that soul to its views, its 
tastes, its desires, spreads out within it, if I may so 
speak, and receives in its turn, by a sympathetic 
exchange, the plentitude of the foreign soul. Language 
is the bond of spirits, not only of spirits united to a 
body, but of pure spirits, and who are reciprocally 
visible in the ‘splendour of their essence; for that 
brightness in which they are does not deliver them 
over to the mercy of one another. They have their 
closed sanctuary—the free place where they think 
before themselves—and it is by voluntary language, by 
language abstract and sublime, that they communicate 
with each other in order to give themselves to one 
another in more abundant and more perfect effusion. 


Language is, at the same time, the intercourse of 


— Ss. 


Prophecy. 129 


spirits with themselves and with other spirits ; it is an 
outer as well as an inner faculty; it is the highest 
means of initiation and communion. Now, I ask, 
shall we refuse to God the power of initiation and 
communion? Shall we refuse to him who has estab- 
lished all the relations between beings—from the grain 
of sand to the seraphim—shall we refuse to him the 
power of holding relations with intelligent beings, cf 
communicating his thoughts and his will to them—in 
fact, of speaking to them? There zs nothing wn the world 
without voice,® said the apostle Saint Paul; there is 
nothing without voice, because there is nothing 
without communication, and God alone is to be at the 
same time silence and isolation! God alone is to be 
silent, and to stand aloof in an exile as immense as 
his nature! No, Gentlemen, my reason can no more 
conceive this thing than my heart; and with the joy 
of evidence I repeat those words of the Book of 
Wisdom: Zhe spirit of the Lord has filled the- whole 
world, and that which containeth all things hath 
knowledge of the voice.” | 

You hear! Zhat which containeth all things. In 
fact, God being the primordial type of beings, they 
possess nothing which God does not possess more 


6 Cor. xiv. 10. 21ers 7, 


130 gig Prophecy. 


Ye 
perfectly; and since language is within us, it is 
necessary that it should be in God in an ineffable and 
infinite manner. This is also what Catholic doctrine 
teaches, and what the apostle Saint John says to us 
with such profound elevation at the commencement 
of his Gospel: Zn the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God® As 
your language is the fruit of your soul—the expression 
and effusion of your soul—there is also something in 
God which is the fruit, the expression, and the effusion 
of his soul, which is God of God, light of light, to use 
the expression of the Council of Nice. And as all the 
force of your language is in your soul, all the force of 
the divine language is also in the source from whence 
it springs. Have you remarked that there are dead 
as well as living words—words that fall upon the earth 
like a spent arrow, and others that fall into the mind 
like a devouring flame? And certainly you have not 
believed that the difference between them sprang 
from the air more or less agitated by the mechanical 
force of the lungs. ‘Their difference springs from the 
soul, which is the principle of language. Dead words 
are those which come from a dead soul; living 


language is that which comes from a living soul. 


®St. John i. 1. 


Prophecy. os 31 
When an orator, in a matter capable of eloquence, 
speaks without moving you, when he leaves you 
master of your resolutions, insensible to error or to 
truth, be sure that a soul has not spoken to you. For 
it is impossible, if a soul had spoken to you, that your 
own could remain a stranger to it; it is impossible for 
a soul to receive without emotion the expression of 
another soul. 

And you would take from God that expression of 
the soul! From God, who is the soul eternally and 
infinitely living, who is all life, all effusion ; you would 
take from him that which remains to us under the icy 
walls of the flesh! Oh! how God abhors that prison 
wherein the unbeliever seeks to confine him; and how 
eloquently he says to us in his Gospel: Man does not 
“ive by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth 
Srom the mouth of God.9 ; 

In fact, whilst the language of man, even the most 
enlightened and the most eloquent, contains of itself 
only verities insufficient for the life of the human 
race, the word of God abundantly diffuses treasures. of 
wisdom such as our own can only acquire by accepting 
it. It is the mediating light by which the infinite 
intelligence raises created intelligences towards itself - 

ike St. Matt. iv. 4. 


K 


132 Prophecy. 


and communicates to them ideas which, whilst sur- 
passing their nature, draw them nevertheless nearer 
to their end. This operation includes nothing which 
is not very conceivable and very simple. All language 
is necessarily in equation with the thought which it 
expresses ; as is the value of the thought of a being, 
‘so is it also the value of his language. Now, the 
thought of God is as great as himself—that is to say, 
without measure—and consequently his word, whether 
he retains it within himself, or whether he produces 
it outwardly, necessarily contains truths which are 
inaccessible to our minds by means of evidence and 
demonstration. But things inevident and undemon- 
strable are not unintelligible ; and when enounced by 
God, and-affirmed by him, they become an incom- 
parable seat of certainty and light for the intelligence 
which receives them. The intelligence does not see 
the infinite, but knows it. 

This phenomenon, in due proportions, is presented 
to us in the purely human order. What, indeed, is 
the action of human language upon man in a state of 
infancy? Does it not act upon infancy as the divine 
word acts upon mankind—that is to say, by way of 
affirmation and initiation? The infant believes his father 


who communicates to him in simple but affirmative 


Prophecy. 133 


jJanguage truths which that feeble intelligence is not 
yet capable of demonstrating, and which nevertheless 
gradually draw him from the native ignorance in 
which he lies, form his thought, elevate his heart, 
and make of him a being moved by knowledge and 
love. 

I will go further; I will say that in all language 
which teaches, there is a mystery of authority and 
initiation. I will say that you, my contemporaries, 
whatever degree of maturity you may have attained, 
are but men initiated in the language of the nine- 
teenth century. You think, perhaps, that you have 
formed yourselves. You err; the nineteenth century 
has formed you. And what is the nineteenth 
century? A spirit expressed by language, which 
language becomes transformed into public opinion, 
lives in the air which you inhabit, penetrates even to 
your bones, and governs you without your knowledge, 
unless a more powerful language has emancipated you 
from it by causing you to respire other and higher 
truth. Whatever mental power you may think you 
possess, whatever greatness of character or genius 
nature may have endowed you with, not one among 
you is of himself independent of his age—not one 
among you, of his own power speaks higher language 

j K 2 


134 Prophecy. 


than the language of his time. Even when in 
advance of it, you are but its echoes and its servants. 
So much does man need to be instructed by a mind 
superior to his ‘own. So much is it part of his 
destiny to hear, to receive, and to obey. Now to 
whom, rather than to God, does he. owe that 
obedience? The language of an age is doubtless 
an authority worthy of respect: it is the result of a 
great ‘movement of the human mind, caused by a 
long course of events which have turned the scale 
of things and ideas. But this is only a station in 
yicissitude. The tempest of the future will soon 
bear the mobility of the world upon other anchors, 
and although there is a certain degree of logic in that 
inconsistency, there is nothing even in all ages taken 
together possessing a character worthy of our faith. 
Nevertheless we give our faith to them because even 
the natural order, although pressing upon us on all 
sides, is so profoundly complicated that we require 
a master to teach us the secret of a single day. 

And God is not to teach us the secret of eternity ? 
But we oppose him in vain. There is in the world 
another teaching than that of ages, another language 
than that of man. ‘This language changes and passes. 


Although so many ingenious lips haye been its 


Prophecy. 135 


eloquent organs, although writing has lent its dura- 
bility to the immortality of eloquence, the human 
tongue has not been able to found the temple of 
truth. The columns lie upon the ground, moved 
from age to age by constructions upon which men 
have graven the prophecy of their duration, and 
which turn to ruins under the hands of the builders 
who come after. Man destroys man, and time reaps 
time. One single edifice stands erect amidst the 
rubbish where the contradictory works of the human 
mind are heaped together. The inscription upon 
this edifice is Zhe Word of God. It is that word 
which, after having created the world and man, has 
not abandoned them to the mercy of their own 
thoughts, too feeble before such a work, but has 
taught them the mystery of their principle and their 
end. It is that word which, having once pronounced 
its secret, known to itself alone, has never ceased to 
repeat it before heaven and earth, calling ages and 
races by their proper names, creating prophets against 
all forgetfulness, apostles against all falsehood, circu- 
lating in the human mind as its very blood, often 
adulterated, never destroyed, drawing forth light from 
error and life from death. ‘This word is Christianity, 


—the Church,—unity in stability,—all that remains 


136 Prophecy. 


amidst all that passes away. Take it from the world, | 


if you can, what would remain? ‘Time and man : 
time which passes, and man who doubts. It is too 
little for a soul. 

I have analyzed prophecy, Gentlemen, inasmuch as 
language is its first element. My intention is to seek 
if it does not contain another, and what is the nature 


of that second element. Before doing this I will 


immediately examine with you the mechanism of 


language, as being the prophetic root in which we 
may be able to discover what we do not yet know. 
The effect of language is the enlightenment of the 
understanding and the direction of the will. How 
is this miraculous phenomenon produced? By what 
process does language enlighten the mind and move 
the will? We must first suppose that it is addressed 
to an intelligent being, that is to say, to a faculty 
capable of knowing, for if it were addressed to a 
being, of what kind soever, which was incapable of 
knowing, it would at most produce only a sensation. 
Thus the animal hears language materially—some ever 
faithfully reproduce it—but it causes in them only 
instinctive movements connected with the sensible 
order of which they form a part. This first condition 


necessary to the efficacy of language being established, 


~ 


Prophecy. L327 


_ what passes between the intelligence that speaks and 
the intelligence that listens? Evidently the first 
presents to the second an intelligible object—that is 
to say, a truth. For every truth, however profound 
it may be, is intelligible, and may be enounced by 
means of language, which is the mould and repre- 
sentation of the true. I suppose, for instance, that 
you are ignorant of mathematics, and that it is my 
mission to teach them to you—here is a truth of that 
order which I should have some day to present to 
you: If a square be constructued upon the hypothe- 
nuse of a right-angled triangle, the surface of that 
square would be equal to the surface of the squares 
constructed upon the two other sides of the same 
triangle. 

This is a portion of elementary geometry which is 
incontestable and proved, yet those of you who have 
not studied the elements of that science have not 
even understood me; they have felt the sensation of 
the words which I have pronounced, and no more. 
Why is this? Is it because this proposition is not a 
truth? Itisatruth. Is it because that truth is not 
within the comprehension of the human intelligence ? 
It is within the comprehension of the human in- 


telligence, and even within the power of a simple 


138 Prophecy. 


student of mathematics. Why then do you not 
understand it? Manifestly because, in order for 
language to have its effect of illumination, it is not 
sufficient that it presents to the mind an intelligible 
object. It is also necessary that the terms whose 
logical enchainment constitutes language should 
possess their individual evidence in order that the 
mind might seize their sense—that is to say—discover 
under each sound the idea which it contains, and 
next, the general idea which the discourse includes. 
This takes place by definition. By means of definition, 
language enlightens language by decomposing it into 
such simple elements, that each word becomes a light, 
or, if you prefer, a ray of that total light which 
becomes the evidence of the mind. 

Let me give you proof of this by defining the 
proposition which I have chosen as an example. 

A triangle is a figure determined by three lines 
which meet so as to produce three angles. When one 
of these angles is nght—that is to say, formed by two 
lines which fall perpendicularly upon one another—the 
triangle is called right-angled. In this case, the side 
of the triangle opposed to the right angle is the 
longest of the three, it being manifest that as the 


angles increase the side corresponding to them 


Prophecy. 139 


it in proportion. This long side of a right- 

angled triangle is the hypothenuse. If it be taken as 
the base of a square, and two others are constructed 
on the short sides of the same triangle, the surface of 
the square of the hypothenuse will be equal to the 
surface of the two other squares. 

You now understand the proposition ; itis no longer 
for you an enchainment of words, but of ideas, which 
by their connection form a new idea. Language has 
become enlightened by being defined. 

But is this all? Is the mystery of initiation 
accomplished? Has your understanding become 
enlightened? Certainly not ; you see clearly what the 
words would convey to you, but you do not yet see 
that what they say to you is true. Nothing convinces 
you that the square of the hypothenuse is, in fact, equal 
in its surface to the squares of the other two sides of 
the right-angled triangle; you possess neither the 
evidence nor the certainty of it. It is for language to 
give you these, and it will do so by demonstration—that 
is to say, by showing you that that idea, which is new 

to you, is nevertheless contained in other ideas which, 
by their invincible and primordial clearness form the 
very foundation of your reason. Language will take 


the obscure idea, will lead it step by step even to 


140 Prophecy. 


the intelligible seat which is the centre and the torch 
of your soul, will present it there to the principle 
from whence it emanates, and give to you in the 
sentiment of their unity that ray of light which is 
evidence, that repose of the mind which is certainty. 
Or even, if demonstration be not possible, whether 
because the truth proposed belongs to an order 
whose principle is not in the human understanding, 
or because it belongs to the profundity of a science 
which you have not the time or the will to acquire, 
then language, initiating you by a shorter road, pre- 
sents a character of authority to you which will invest 
the idea with a sufficient and legitimate sanction. 

Such is the natural strategy of language. And yet, 
notwithstanding that triple power of proposition, 
definition, and demonstration, language is not certain 
of success. You are able to resist it; you are able 
to refuse your assent to it, to brave its light; and, 
intrenched in the fortress of your own convictions, 
not even to feel, to the distant remorse of your 
conscience, that truth has spoken to you. You are 
feeble and free ; feebleness and liberty protect you 
against the ascendency of language. Feebleness veils 
from you the splendour of truth which it contains, 


liberty permits you to refuse to accept its yoke. It 


Prophecy. IAI 


is needful then to do more than propose truth to 
you, more than define it, more than demonstrate it to 
you; it is needful to persuade you. Persuasion is 
the eternal glory of language human and divine; this 
is the victory, of which Montaigne should have said, 
rather than of Marathon or of Platza, ¢hat it zs the 
most glorious which the sun has ever seen, since it is the 
victory of thought over the two greatest powers of 
the world, namely, feebleness and liberty. 

But how and by what are we to persuade? I will 
give you an example. 

In 1738, England was ruled by a ministry who 
desired peace, and at any cost. Now, at that very 
time, an English sailor was captured at sea, outraged 
and mutilated by the Spaniards, and this event 
produced a great movement of public indignation 
throughout England. Nevertheless the ministry had 
resolved to preserve peace, and the British parliament 
had formed the same determination. ‘The sailor 
appeared in the streets of London, he showed the 
wounds and injuries which he had received, and so 
excited popular indignation, that the parliament could 
not avoid seeing him, and listening to his complaint. 
He appeared then in the House of Commons, and 


after relating. with calm and simple brevity the 


1.42 Prophecy. 


history of the assault of which he had been the victim, 
he ended with these words—“ When the Spaniards 
mutilated me in this way they wanted to make me 
afraid of death, but I accepted death as I had 
accepted outrage, recommending my soul to God, 
and my revenge to my country.” War was declared. 
That unlettered man needed but a quarter of an hour 
to change the councils of his country, to force the 
ministry to draw the sword, the parliament to vote 
the subsidies, the nation to applaud, and human blood 
to be shed in order to avenge his outrage. He had 
persuaded. 

And daily you witness these triumphs of language ; 
or at least, if they are more rare than I say, you witness 
them sometimes, were it only in remembrance, on 
recalling to mind the famous exhibitions of eloquence. 
You hear Demosthenes obtaining the condemnation of 
Eschines, Cicero drawing from the hands of Cezesar 
the condemnation of Ligarius, and you ask in what 
consists that sovereign art without which reason and 
justice are not sure of victory, by which error and 
passion obtain it but too often. Yes, eloquent language 
is a dominating power which commands obedience ; 
but what is eloguence? What can it impart to language 


but light and truth? Is there anything in the world 


Prophecy. 143 


more persuasive than light, more powerful than truth ? 
Yes, Gentlemen, what is more powerful than truth is the 
principle from whence it emanates; what is more 
persuasive than light is the centre from whence it 
springs ; what is greater than language is the soul 
from whence it proceeds. Eloquence is the soul itself ; 
eloquence is the soul bursting all the bands of the 
flesh, quitting the bosom that bore it, and casting itself 
headlong into the soul of another. Can you then 
wonder that it commands, that it reigns? It is a soul 
which has taken the place of your own. Is it not 
plain that that soul which is within you, which is 
yourself, more than yourself, says to you, Go! and . 
you go; Come! and you come; Bend the knee! and 
you kneel. 

In short, the mystery of language at the state of 
eloquence, is the substitution of the soul that speaks 
for the soul that listens ; or to speak with justice that 
leaves nothing incomplete, it is the fusion of the soul 
that speaks with the soul that listens. Eloquence has 
but one rival, and yet that rival is one only because it 
is eloquent; it is love. Love, like eloquence, melts 
hearts, and their power, so dissimilar in appearance, has 
the same cause and the same effect. 


Now, it is not sufficient, either for God or man, to 


144 Prophecy. 


propose, to define and to demonstrate truth. For God 
meets with the same obstacles to his word as man to 
his own, and even greater. Whilst human language is 
but the organ of thoughts accessible to finite intelligences 
which have their root and their proof in the natural 
orbit of reason, the divine word essentially revealing 
in its nature, bears with it truths of which the universe 
forms hardly the shadow, of which reason is but a 
reflection, and to which no measure is applicable but 
the infinite. If then man is feeble before the things 
which he sees and touches, if his own history isa 
labyrinth before him, and his own mind an abyss, what 
will he become before the infinite unveiled by a simple 
affirmation? If he is free against man, how much 
more free will he be against God, a being placed at so 
great a distance from him, and so much the less violent 
in his operations as he is absolute master of all? 
Doubtless in order to give credence-to his word, God 
supports it by striking signs ; but those very signs are 
subject to discussion, and even if the mind, mute in 
their presence, knows not what to oppose to the 
splendour of their testimony, it will always find within 
itself, whether from the obscurity of the thing revealed, 
or from the sole effort of liberty, a principle of 


resistance and illusion. The Jews, for three years, saw 


Prophecy. 145 


Jesus Christ acting among them as a supreme master 
of nature ; for three years they brought to him all the 
infirmities of the body, to be healed by a word from 
his mouth, or a touch of his raiment ; they witnessed 
the miracles of his death after having been spectators 
of the miracles of his life; and yet, notwithstanding 
so many signs witnessed by them, notwithstanding the 
anterior prophecies whose depositaries they were, and 
whose accomplishment they looked for, a veil remained 
before their eyes. They were not able to believe in 
the humility of God; the thunderbolt would perhaps 
have converted them, goodness made them blind and 
ungrateful. God made himself too little for them, and 
the terrible majesties of Sinai hid from them the 
mercy that visited them. It is the same with that 
multitude of souls who exhaust or torture themselves 
in incredulity. The miracles of sixty centuries pass 
before them as a chance without cause; they admit 
that it is grand and wonderful, but without humbling 
their hearts before the mystery that covers those 
marvels lost to them. According to the expression of 
Scripture, ¢hey see and they do not set, they hear and 
they do not hear: the book of life is in their hands 
with the inimitable seal of the divine omnipotence 3 


10St. Luke, viii. &. 


0 


146 Prophecy. 


they see it, they touch it, they think of it for an 
instant, and pass on. 

And if here under the vaults of Notre Dame, I were 
to raise the dead in the name of Christ, do you 
suppose you would all leave this place convinced and 
converted? No; I am sure you would not, and the 
whole history of Christianity is an undeniable proof of 
this. 

It is not enough then for the word of God, in order 
to become established in souls, to be authorized by 
certain miracles, it must also vanquish the resistance 
of man to divine truth ; it is necessary for it to move, 
to touch—in fine, to persuade. The spirit of God, 
the only spirit capable of containing the infinite, must 
descend by: an immediate influence into the narrow 
vase of our heart, must incite it, inspire it, produce in 
it, in a more powerful manner than human eloquence, 
the assimilation of the inferior to the superior soul. 
It is there whence springs all the intercourse between - 
God and man, and man and God. If the eternal soul 
does not really approach the created soul here below, 
| religion is but a dream over which we ought to weep. 
We should inscribe over the portals of its temples, as 
over the portal of hell, Whoever enters here must leave 


hope behind him. It is the Spirit of God that gives 


Prophecy. 147 


life to the divine word, as it is the spirit of man that 
gives life to human language. Language separated 
from its spirit is nothing more than a dead body in a 
tomb. Now God being always living, his word also 
exists always. Once sent from him, wherever it may 
go and in whatever form it may subsist, it is aided by 
its Father who lives in it and it in him. Whilst human 
language perishes on the first furrow which time makes, 
and gives to the ear of generations only an echo 
disdained by those who think they still hear it, the 
divine word sows its immortality in the ruins of the 
world. It is as fertile after a thousand years as on 
the day when it was first enounced ; it inspires the 
same faith, creates the same works, is recognised 
by the same signs, and effaces them all by that of its 
own life. 

That life has a name celebrated in the history of 
the relations between man and God 3 It is called grace 
—that is to say, the unmerited gift, the highest of all 
gifts. And what gift indeed can be greater than the 
Spirit of God himself placed in intimate contact with 
the spirit of man! This is the marvel- which began 
with the world, and whose consummation by Christ the 
prophets announced from hour to hour. David said, - 
Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy 


L 


148 Prophecy. 


Holy Spirit from me™ Solomon said, And who shall 
know thy thought, except thou give wisdom and send thy 
Holy Spirit from above !™ Isaiah said, And the Spirit of 
the Lord shail rest upon him; the spirit of wisdom and of 
understanding, the spirit of counsel and of fortitude, the 
spirit of knowledze and of godliness.% Joel said in the 
name of God, JZ will pour out my Spirit upon all 
flesh ; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy ; 
your old men shall dream dreams, and your young 
men shall see visions. ‘The precursor said, L zndecd 
baptize you with water ; but there shall come one mightier 
than J, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to 
loose, he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with 
fire® And Jesus Christ said, When they shall deliver 
you up for my sake, take no thought how or what to 
speak ; for it shall be given to you in that hour what io 
speak; for it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your 
Father that speaketh in you.’ He said also, £ well ask 
the Father, and he shall give you another Paractete, that he 
may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of truth, whom the 
world cannot receive, because tt seeth hint not, nor knoweth 


him; but you shall know him, because he shall abide with 


MPs. ligt. B yoo zs: 
12 Wisd. ix. 17. 15 St, Luke, iii. 16. 
13 Wasd. xi. 2. 16 St. Matt. x. “19; 20. 


Shiu 


Prophecy. 149 


you, and shall be in you. Not that Jesus Christ, 
the Son of God and very God, did not communicate 
to his disciples the grace and truth whose fulness he 
was ; but because, being the eternal Verb, he was 
especially charged with the sowing of the word, which 
is the first prophetic element, whilst the effusion of 
grace, the second element of prophecy, was reserved 
in all its plenitude to the third person of the Holy 
Trinity, coeternally issued from the Father and the 
Son, the fruit and bond of their love, the last term of 
their divine fecundity, and therefore charged with 
placing the final seal of life to the work of God in 
time. It was fitting also that the two prophetic 
elements, the word and grace, although inseparable 
from one another, should, nevertheless, have had a 
distinct emission, so that mankind, warned by the 
grandeur of that double accession, should feel that 
it was not capable of communicating with God, even 
by means of his word, without the perpetual and 
intimate assistance of the divine Spirit. Such was the 
object, and such is the sense of that great day in 
which the Paraclete announced - by Jesus Christ 

escended visibly upon the apostles, and taking from 
them the remains of weakness and obscurity which 


St. John xiv. 16, 17. 
Lu 2 


150 P rophecy. 


they had still in them, made of them those men whose 
blood, after that of Christ, has founded upon earth the 
reign of truth. : 

There are but few among you who have not known 
by personal experience the reality of the prophetic 
mystery. You have all received the seeds of that 
language, which resembles none other; all of you 
at some time or other, as children or as young men, 
have felt in your souls an unction that filled them with 
light, and brought to you in chaste tears the taste for 
good, forgetfulness of the senses, the peace and 
presence of God. On that day all was said to you. 
No man will ever give you back its joy ; no love wilh 
ever bring you back its perfume, but the love which 
was then given to you, and, which, being the divine 
goodness itself, waits but for a regret and a desire 
from you to love you again. May you draw from your 
heart that desire and that regret, and, by a second 
experience of grace, become again and for ever the 
children and the apostles of that word which alone 


never deceives ! 


MYSTERY AS THE OBJECT OF PROPHECY 


te ee ae 
ee Ore tha 


MYSTERY AS THE OBJECT ‘OF PROPHECY. 


My Lorp,—GENTLEMEN, | 

Ir results from our last Conference, that the 
things revealed by God through prophecy surpass the 
natural power of our understanding, and are therefore 
for us beyond all demonstration and above all com- 
prehension. Were they only undemonstrable, the 
mind might perhaps accept this condition, since, even 
in the natural order, there are truths which may be 
attested but not demonstrated, such as the ancient 
events which form history; and since man obtains 
credence to his testimony in regard to human things, 
it is not easy to understand why it should be refused in 
regard to divine things. But there is this difference, 
that the object of prophecy is incomprehensible as 
well as undemonstrable, and this is what rationalism 
will not forgive. What !—says rationalism—you show 
forth prophecy as the light of the world, and yet you 


yourselves confess that you do not comprehend it! 


154. Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


You call your dogmas by the significant name of 
mysteries ; you seem to make a boast of the obscurity 
that reigns in revelation. After reading your books 
you exclaim, O the depth of the riches of the wisdom 
and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible 
are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways /"* 
Now, how can that which is mysterious, obscure, 
unsearchable, incomprehensible in fine, be the lght 
of the world? For us—that is to say, for every man 
who does not renounce his reason—mystery is at the 
same time useless and absurd ; useless, since its sense 
is not to be seized; absurd, since wherever the sense 
escapes nothing rational remains. 

Such is the double difficulty which rises before us, 
and which requires from me a double explanation. 
We are told that mystery is useless—I shall prove its 
utility. They add that it is absurd—I shall prove its 
reasonableness. 

It is certain, and it would be a great illusion to 
wish to hide it from you, that the word of God reveals 
to us things which surpass our reason ; and were it 
otherwise, God would have no motive in speaking to 
us, since we should be able of ourselves to discover 
the truths about which it may please him to communi- 


35 Rom. X1.’.33- 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 155 


cate with us. But God is greater than we are ; placed 
on the horizon of the infinite, which is his essence, he 
sees what we do not see, and tells us what no one 
but himself can say to us. Why does he communi- 
cate this to us? Being unable or unwilling to give 
us evidence of the things which he reveals to us, why 
does he reveal them to us? Where lies the utility 
of such communication? In proving to you in a 
former Conference the necessity of the supernatural 
intercourse between man and God, I have already 
answered this question. But I did so metaphysically, 
and if you will permit me we will to-day leave 
metaphysics aside. Utility is a matter of fact. You 
deny the utility of the incomprehensible, I maintain 
it. It matters little now about the exact definition 
of those words—understand or not understand. ‘To 
define them would perhaps suffice to put an end to 
the question ; but I shall not do so. I leave them 
in your minds as they are, and starting from the 
vulgar idea that to be useful is to do good, I ask: 
Does the incomprehensible do good to man? If it 
does, if history proves it perfectly, whatever reasoning 
you may oppose to that result will fall powerless. In 
a question of utility, the result decides all. It matters 


not whether we explain to ourselves or do not explain 


156 Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


the benefit ; it exists. Is there any one here who has 
ever despised a benefit because he did not render 
account to himself of the process by which his bene- 
factor had served him? 

I renew, then, my question, I ask myself and you: 
Does the incomprehensible do good to man? 

There are some among you who think they owe 
nothing to this strange benefactor. Disciples of 
reason, they think they are formed by themselves, 
and that nothing but evidence has entered into the 
structure of their minds. But even were this true, 
aman is not man, and I speak of man. I speak of 
you all, contemporaries of the nineteenth century, 
connected by your fathers with the ages which have 
gone by; belonging altogether to a great historical 
movement which has changed the face of the world, 
and prepared for each of you another destiny than 
that which the course of ancient civilization would 
have formed for him. ‘This is the real man, the man 
whom I interrogate, and not the ideal man who 
believes he has separated himself from the paternity 
of his times. Now, what has formed that real man ? 
What has formed modern mankind? Is it not 
Christianity? And is there even one among you 


who would deny the superiority of the Christian man 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 157 


over those who have sprung from another generation ? 
If you doubt of this, I would say to you: Compare 
yourselves with the most illustrious and_ perfect 
specimens of mankind that the world has produced 
before and since you have occupied your place 
therein. Certainly that was a great race whose 
country was Athens and Rome—a race fertile in 
legislators, in sages, in heroes ; memorable in war by 
its conquests, in politics by its institutions, in peace 
by its arts, and which, although extinguished for many 
centuries, draws us even now around its ruins to give 
us lessons. But however marvellous its history, which 
of you would consent to live again in that antiquity ? 
Which of you would sacrifice the rights and duties of 
the Christian man for all the glory of the Greek or 
the Roman? On reading the most glorious things 
which they have left to us, we feel, from their gods to 
their virtues, that they were but infant peoples, and 
that the very excellence of their literature, so far from 
being a veil to their inferiority, is its striking and 
immortal revelation. The masterpieces of those two 
languages will live to the latest posterity as a 
testimony that habits of barbarism may be joined to 
an exquisite cultivation of the mind, and great feeble- 


ness of thought to marvellous science of style. 


158 Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


Therefore, when Christianity, born with the world 
but unknown by it, rose up before that ingenious and 
powerful society which had never known an equal 
upon earth, it had but to speak and to die in order to 
ruin its civilization. ‘The man of Greece and Rome 
cannot hold his place before the Christian man. 

And what, then, was the Christian man? What 
did he bring with him that was more powerful than 
Athens and Rome ?—Athens, mistress in the science 
of speaking; Rome, mistress in the art of fighting 
and governing. What did he bring, Gentlemen ? 
One single thing, which contained all the rest—the 
incomprehensible. He announced to the world that 
the human race, defiled from the beginning, received 
and transmitted with its blood the joint responsibility 
of an inexpiable fault; but that God, one in three 
persons, had sent his Son upon earth to take our 
nature in the womb of a virgin, and, by a voluntary 
sacrifice, to redeem us from sin and death. He 
announced that this mystery was accomplished, that 
the Son of God, come in the flesh, had appeared in 
Judeea, that he had taught there, and that, having 
been put to death upon a cross, buried in a sepulchre, 
he was raised again on the third day, assuring by his 


death his triumph over sin, and by his resurrection his 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 159 


triumph over death. Such was the Christian dogma, 
and such also was the principle of the civilization 
which has made you what you are, by overthrowing 
all the antique society. Either you must deny your 
superiority over the ideas and the things of paganism, 
or recognise the utility of the incomprehensible. 

You may suppose that Christianity includes two 
distinct elements—the one reasonable, which is the 
source of the good wrought by it in the world ipguive, 
other mysterious, which is but an envelope by which 
exalted truths and holy virtues have by chance been 
covered. In fact, does not the Gospel naturally 
explain itself? If it speaks of miracles and dogmas 
which alarm reason, it speaks still more of a sage 
who teaches the people simple and sublime morality, 
gentleness, modesty, patience, disinterestedness, justice, 
and that which includes all in a single precept—the 
sincere love of God and man. Must we wonder that 
a code so perfect, emanated from a pure soul which 
maintained even to death the lessons he had given, 
should at length have produced in the human race . 
a salutary and memorable effect? It is impossible to 
read the Gospel without wishing at least to be better : 
and this desire, become that of a great number, has at 


length been realised in some, who, from age to age, 


160 Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


have adorned the world by their virtues. The incom- 
prehensible is here but an unimportant help ; it is the 
fable that precedes or that clothes truth. I grant that 
Christianity results entirely in the love of God and 
mankind ; and here lies the secret of the prodigious 
change which it has introduced and maintains among 
us. But this love, so long despised upon earth, so 
difficult even now to know by proper experience, is 
that revolution itself in its last, its most profound 
effect. The Gospel, you say, has caused you to love 
God and man: it is so—I know it, I proclaim it— 
but how did it produce this love for those who had 
not been loved for four thousand years? How has 
it drawn the human heart from the egotism of its 
passions, and above all from the egotism of its virtues ? 
Is it because it has said, Love God, love mankind? 
Alas! if it had said but that, it would have exercised 
just the power which so many dead philosophers 
exercise over us, who honour us with their counsels. 
Men would have set up a statue of Jesus Christ at the 
door of an academy; they would have preserved his 
portrait in the museums of civilized nations; and, 
since the invention of printing, they would have 
written in all the languages of Europe that the Gospel 


is a great book; but the poor would neither have 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 161 


known the book nor the sage, and the hearts of all 
would have continued to find enjoyment in selfish » 
_ sensuality and pride. 

Would you learn how Jesus Christ has raised us 
towards God, and inclined us towards man? Leave 
the church of Notre Dame, and turn to your left. 
Upon a building there, without architectural merit, 
you will read this inscription, Hore, Dieu, Perhaps 
the inscription may have disappeared from the stone. 
I know not; but it subsists in the memory and 
language of the people, and that is enough. Cross 
the threshold, mount the staircase, raise your eyes 
to the image above the door, you will read, L’HoMME 
Dieu. Advance still further, enter the cell of one of 
those voluntary servants who devote their days to 
the infirmities of the poor. You are young, attrac- 
tive, rich; she is clothed in beauty which comes from 
virtue ; offer her your hand. She will answer you, 
To me, L’Epousr pE Dieu! If these three incom- 
prehensible words—the House of God, the Man God, 
the Spouse of God—do not yet enlighten you, ask’ 
that soul why she has quitted the hopes of the werld 
fo consume herself in this hospital, amongst misery 
which is not her own; she will tell you its secret. 


Of whom would you learn it if not of those who 


162 Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


possess the love whose cause you seek? She will tell 
you that she loves God, because God loved her even 
to death; that she loves mankind, because God, in 
taking their nature upon him, and dying for them, has 
caused them to share in his adorable goodness. If 
God is not man, if he did not die, be sure there is no 
spouse of God, or house of God; the virtue of the 
Christian comes from the incomprehensible, as the 
flower from the earth. The incomprehensible is the 
soul of the Christian; it is his light, his strength, his 
life, his breath. Say that this is madness, if you will. 
I have not undertaken to prove that it is not so, but 
that it serves you. For sixty years you have been 
endeavouring to do without this madness, and to 
preserve the benefits of Christianity whilst repudiating 
its dogmas: it is for you to judge whether you have 
succeeded. 

Man is a divine animal, and the incomprehensible 
is his food. Were this gift of heaven ever fully 
withdrawn from him, you would behold a spectacle 
which I cannot describe, because it has never been 
beheld. Even paganism, all divested as it was, 
included the confused remains of the primordial 
incomprehensible, and these very remains formed its 


greatness in certain nations, and in certain times. 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 163 


When Rome had resolved to set up the centre and— 
foundation of her future power upon a solitary hill, 
she built there, at the same time, a temple and a 
camp, leaving between the two an empty space, which 
was, as it were, the seat upon which she held her 
place, with one hand resting upon her arms, and the 
other upon heaven. From that place she watched 
and governed the world, deriving therefrom wisdom 
as invincible as her courage, and when her victors 
brought to her the kings and the spoils of nations, 
they mounted to that Capitol as the tutelary spot 
where their victories had taken their birth in the will 
of the gods that dwelt there. This religious character 
lasted as long as the virtue and liberty of Rome. The 
sacred mysteries presided over all; they were borne 
even before the enemy, and those famous generals, 
who had received from fortune and from their genius 
so many assurances of victory, dared not trust to a 
battle without having consulted, through auguries, the 
impenetrable counsel of the gods of the world and the 
country. But when Cicero was able to declare that 
he could not conceive how two augurs could look at 
one another without laughing, Rome fell from the 
Capitol to the Palatinate, from the temple of the gods 


to that of the Czesars ; and soon, Tiberius, followed by 
M 


164. Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


Nero, heaped the scorn of his tyranny upon the living 
and dead of the people-king. Laugh as you please 
at the sacred chickens; but learn at least that when 
they were no more, there were no more Scipios. And 
you will find the same spectacle, resultmg from the 
same cause, everywhere in the history of the world. 
Everywhere the decline of nations follows the decline 
of the incomprehensible, and the earth has devoured 
all those who have no longer regarded heaven save as 
the eye discovers it on the horizon. 

I admire, then, the Egyptians, for having placed the 
Sphinx at the entry of their temples. It is the old 
friend of man, and his natural herald to the infinite. 
Despise it as much as you will, appeal from it to pure 
reason, to the sacred rights of the human intelligence ; 
for my part, I shall hold to the Sphinx, as long as I 
see it at the door of virtues that found and glories 
that have a posterity. 

Yet you will still say, Why the Sphinx? Why the 
incomprehensible ? Here, Gentlemen, you change the 
question ; you no longer ask me to prove the utility 
of the incomprehensible, but to give you the reason 
of its existence in the human race. Now, I believe 
I have given you this in the Conference where I 


recently treated of the need of supernatural inter- 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 165 


course between man and God, and I shall succeed. 
perhaps in enlightening you in regard to it by what I 
am about to say on the subject of the reasonableness 
of the things whose certainty we possess without 
understanding them. 

Nothing absurd can be useful, and above all useful 
to all mankind ; it suffices that the incomprehensible 
does good to men for us to conclude from it that it 
is essentially rational. Therefore, whoever says of 
Christianity that it is the benefactor of the world, 
says at the same time that the incomprehensible, to 
far from contradicting reason, is its last and most 
magnificent effort. I feel, nevertheless, that this 
proof, all-sufficient though it may be, does not 
respond to the want which you feel of fathoming so 
grave a subject. I will then take a more direct path, 
and show you that in every rational thing there enters 
an incomprehensible element, as in every incompre- 
-hensible thing there is a rational element. It will 
then be no longer permitted to you to think that 
reason and mystery mutually reject each other, since 
the one is never without the other, and as the shadow 
accompanies light in nature, so it is also in the infinite 
depths where our intelligence combats truth. 

I affirm in the first place that into every rational 


M 2 


166 Mystery.as the Object of Prophecy. 


thing there enters an incomprehensible element. 
Nothing is more within the comprehension of reason 
than the bodies that people space, and especially the 
bodies that form the globe which we inhabit ; reason 
sees, touches, weighs, measures, confronts, analyses 
them, makes of them whatever it wills. And yet 
what do men call that which in bodies is subject to 
the investigations of reason? They call it a pheno- 
menon—that is to say, something that appears. A 
forcible and sincere avowal, which proves that reason 
does not see all the body, and that if a part of it 
unveils to its curiosity, something also still remains 
hidden. Do you doubt this? Consider that other 
expression by which science designates the body 
itself, an expression much more formidable and 
despairing, and which is to the phenomenon what 
night is to day. It calls a body a substance—that is 
to say, what is under ; that something which is under 
what appears. And what, indeed, is a body in itself ? 
When you haye proved its colour, its weight, the 
mode of aggregation of its parts, the action which it 
exercises on other bodies, do you know what it is? 
Modern chemistry and, before it, alchemy, have doubt- 
less endeavoured to pursue substance to its last depths, 


and draw from it the secret of its coraposition. They 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 167 


have even succeeded to a degree almost prodigious, 
and which has opened to us mysteries long hidden by 
nature from our investigations. Nevertheless the 
shadow has but retreated without disappearing, and 
the place which it has yielded to light has not 
lessened for us the abyss of the unknown. We 
know that bodies, forced by analysis, resolve into a 
certain number of substances which we call elements ; 
but what the element is we know not. Matter takes 
refuge therein as in a fortress, where it braves the 
pride of our experiments and the dictation of our 
will. | 

It is the same with the vegetable and animal germ 
as with the universal element, but with a circumstance 
which it is well to notice. Science has power over 
the universal element, in the sense that it is able to 
make it again constitute a body properly so called ; 
but when analysis has decomposed the germs of the 
animal and vegetable order, it is powerless to recall 
the principle of life which was contained therein. 
Under its instruments only inanimate refuse remains. 
It sees, it touches, the mysterious dust from whence 
the mighty oak of the forest, or the agile inhabitant 
of their hidden paths, should spring; but that dust 
is henceforth dead. Why dead? Whence is it that 


168 Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


the sepulchre being broken, the living being has 
disappeared? What is life? Life is in a germ; it 
will remain there for ages, solitary and silent, without 
becoming lost and without acting; but let analysis 
touch it and life disappears, as if jealous nature 
determined to become more incomprehensible in 
proportion as its work became more perfect. 

In man you will find too undeniable a proof of 
this. Man is a body, and he includes in his body all 
the unknowns of the material world, all the things 
that are visible but unexplained. But conjointly with 
this first mystery, in the complex tissue of a sole 
personality, he holds a second abyss more terrible 
than the first—the abyss of his thought. Man thinks, 
he wills, he is free, he governs himself, all things of 
which no trace is seen in the body, and all things 
which escape from the most ingenious researches of 
scientific analysis. Never has science been able to 
attract thought into its crucible, never has it been 
able to subject it to any instrumented power. The 
spiritualist affirms that it is not the fruit of the body, 
but of another substance which he calls spirit, and 
which, deprived of form, extent, colour, weight—of 
whatever is known to us by the senses—constitutes a 


reality of which nothing visible could give us the 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 169 


faintest and most distant representation. Therefore 
but just now, the lowest of beings—the universal 
element—although remaining under our eyes, escaped 
in its essence from the efforts of our investigation; a 
little higher, in the animal and vegetable germ, life 
retreated before our researches, and did not even 
leave us the consolation of catching a glimpse of the 
source from whence its activity springs ; now behold 
spirit, which never, under any form, by any image, has 
permitted us to approach it, although it is ourselves. 
The materialist, it is true, denies spirit, and maintains 
that thought is a simple effect of the body attained to 
a certain state of perfection: but is this clearer? Do 
we thereby learn any more clearly how matter, which 
does not think at all of itself, derives in a certain 
organization the faculty of thinking? 

However it may be, we think, and in the personal 
mystery of our thoughts there arises another still 
higher, which we call the eternal, the infinite, the 
principle—God. - As nature is the natural horizon 
of our physical vision, God is the necessary horizon 
of our intellectual vision. We cannot open our 
eyelids without seeing the indefinite space wherein 
bodies move, and we cannot awaken our thought 


without disclosing the first cause that contains in 


170 © Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


itself all the possible and all the real. The infidel 
may refuse it the name of God ; he may endeavour to 
confound the cause with the effect by transporting to 
the visible world the idea which we have of being 
subsisting of itself: but that despairing effort in no 
way lessens the depths of the mystery which dwells 
in thought, and, whatever thought may do, eternity is 
before it. However, Gentlemen, I never address 
atheism; that forlorn hope of the last follies of 
the heart has too few representatives to render it 
needful to speak to it in a great assembly of men ; 
your number alone tells me that you believe in God, 
and therefore it is my right as well as my duty to 
oppose to your ambition to understand all, the incom- 
prehensible light of his nature and of his name. 
What intelligence placed before this last abyss can 
say, I have fathomed it! What soul, how vast soeve1 
it may be, does not halt, sad and pensive, before that 
short word, God! An atom confounds us—and 
behold us in the presence of the infinite! Can you 
represent the infinite to yourselves? Can you con- 
ceive a substance without beginning in its duration— 
without limits in its being—filling all with its presence 
and its action, although concentrated in an indivisible 


unity which has no place but in itself? The day 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 171 


would run its course before I could even name all the — 
mysteries contained in this supreme mystery; in 
which, however, all life takes its birth with all light. 
For, such is our condition, we meet with darkness in 
the very things from which we desire light. From 
earth to spirit, from spirit to God, in the three spheres 
of our speculation and our activity, a sparing as well 
as a prodigal hand has wisely mingled the shadow 
that blinds us with the splendour that enchants us. 
In vain will reason grow indignant at this adulterous 
wedlock ; it must accept the incomprehensible as the 
shore that contains evidence ; or, renouncing truth, 
address to it, in scepticism, an irrevocable adieu. 

- Scepticism, Gentlemen, is but the despair of a mind 
great enough to know that it does not see the whole of 
anything, according to the expression of Pascal, but 
too feeble to respect in mystery the inevitable limit 
imposed upon the created spirit. Whilst the vulgar 
rationalist, inebriated by his own ideas, thinks he 
comprehends all that he thinks, the sceptic, with as 
much pride and more penetration, discerns the weak 
side of human science, and conceives a gloomy 
distaste for truth. Surveying with his melancholy 
regard the progressive enchainment of things, and 


halting at God, he asks himself—Do I comprehend 


172 Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


God? No; remove him then! But do I comprehend 
myself, my mind? No; away then with the mind! 
But matter, at least! Doubtless, I see matter. I 
make experiments upon it; and, yet, do I know what 
itis? Can I say that I comprehend it? Away with 
matter! Thus from one degree to another, from one 
kind of despair to another, reason vanishes within 
itself, according to the energetic expression of Saint 
Paul, and upon the uncertain ruins of all reality, it 
exclaims with lamentable despair, What do I know, 
and what am I? Doubt, it is true, does not often 
descend to that depth where nothing subsists in the 
mind : but wherever it may halt it is the destroyer of 
the soul, and whether higher or lower, it has but one 
and the same cause, which is the refusal to consent to 
the incomprehensible as a necessity and an element of 
reason. For my part, if I were in this state, if I 
recognised the sign of truth only in an absolute light, 
I declare to you, I should not believe in matter any 
more than in spirit; any more in spirit than in God ; 
I should be to myself a painful enigma, a puff of air 
in the desert, a lamentation in a sepulchre, the 
plaything of an existence without principle or end; I 
should advance in my days at the hazard of each sun, 


between the sadness of yesterday and the joy of 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 173 


to-morrow, expecting nothing more from life, nothing 
more from death. But, thanks. to God, I adore in- 
evidence the shadow that limits it; I know that truth, 
the single and sacred object of my entire soul, is as 
great as the infinite, and that the infinite, being only 
comprehensible to its equal—that is to say, to itself, 
it is natural that I should not see anything entirely, 
but in a measure sufficient to know without sufficing 
to exhaust. 

And as in every rational thing an incomprehensible 
element is found, in every incomprehensible thing a 
rational element is also found—that is to say, the idea. 
The idea, is all that which the mind sees; and the 
mind, seeing nothing but by its primitive light, which 
is reason ; it follows that every idea, how problematic 
soever it may be, is a rational element. Now, 
Christianity, whose dogmas we confess to be 
incomprehensible, bears evidently in its very dogma 
the treasure of the idea; and, if you doubt this, I will 
give you but one proof of it, namely, that it speaks. 
Christianity speaks, it has spoken dogmatically for 
eighteen centuries ; therefore, however incomprehen- 
sible its dogma may be, its dogma is an idea, and 
consequently something rational. 

Does this reasoning astonish you,Gentlemen? Have 


174 Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


you never reflected upon what it is to speak? ‘To 
speak is to enchain words together, and words being 
only ideas living under an expression, to speak is to 
enchain ideas. Whoever speaks gives proof that he 
sees something in his mind, and transmits to the mind 
that listens to him the whole, or part, of the light by 
which he is enlightened. Were it otherwise, language 
would be but a continuation of sounds falling into the 
ear, and not into the intelligence; it would be noise, 
and yet noise without signification. But, you ask me, 
does not the absurd also speak? And, since it 
speaks, is it not a light, an idea, a rational element ? 
Doubtless it is all that, and if it were not, it would be 
impossible to speak and to be understood. The 
absurd is the evidence of the false, and the false being 
only a truth which is abused, it is truth hidden in the 
false which consents to be enounced. An absolute 
error, representing nothing to the mind, would call 
forth no expression in the thought; it would be pure 
nothingness. ‘The glory of truth is to live even in 
error, and to enlighten the language which expresses 
it, so that the absurd becomes manifest to the eyes of 
the understanding. So far, then, from there being no 
‘dea or rational substance in the absurd; it is found 


there in so elevated a degree that all at once exclaim, 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. = 175 


That is not common sense. The absurd is the second 
revelation of the true, more powerful perhaps than 
the direct revelation, and that is the reason why 
mathematics employ so often that form of reasoning 
which is called demonstration ad absurdum. 

I return, then, to my declaration: Christianity 
speaks, it has spoken dogmatically for eighteen 
centuries ; and, therefore, however incomprehensible 


its dogma may be, its dogma is necessarily an idea 


—that is to say—something rational. This is true, 
perhaps you will say, but it is something rational 
ad absurdum ; for sce the absurd speaks as much 
as the incomprehensible, what hinders it from 
confounding the incomprehensible with itself? What 
hinders it, is that the one is not the other, that the 
absurd is the evidence of the false, whilst the incom- 
prehensible fails, at the same time, in the evidence of 
the false and of the true. The incomprehensible is 
something which reason does not explain, nothing 
more. Would you deny its existence? Would you 
deny that particular state of the human mind? But 
I have shown you that the incomprehensible follows 
us even into the objects of science; I have presented 
it to you as the necessary term of our highest light. 


If the incomprehensible became confounded in its 


176. Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


nature with the absurd, there would be no shadows, 
since the absurd is as clear as a demonstration. It 
being then proved that the incomprehensible is a 
distinct category of the human mind, a separate 
condition, if you like it better, where the under- 
standing has neither the evidence of the false nor the 
evidence of the true, there remains this difficulty : that 
to understand not is to see nothing. What have I to 
do against this difficulty? Must I show you that the 
incomprehensible is not the exclusion of all idea ; 
and, consequently, of all rational vision? On this 
account I have said; Christianity is incomprehensible 
in its dogma; and, yet, dogmatic Christianity is an 
idea ; it is an idea, since it speaks. Your reply to that 
is: the absurd speaks also. Yes, but it speaks with 
the character of the absurd—that is to say—with the 
absence of decisive clearness, whether for the false or 
the true. 

If, however, the example of Christianity should 
embarrass you, from the notion which you may 
entertain that its doctrine manifestly bears the sign of 
the absurd, I shall withdraw it from a discussion into 
which it does not necessarily enter, and ask you, Do 
you comprehend eternity, the infinite, God? Do you 


comprehend a being who exists of himself, who 1s 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 177 


because he is, without beginning and without end? 
Do you comprehend the union in one single person 
of two substances as opposed to each other as 
body and spirit? Do you understand the action 
of body upon spirit, and of spirit upon body? 
Assuredly no. These mysteries then which are so 
profound, so impenetrable—do they, or do they not, 
present any idea to your understanding? If you 
answer me, yes—and you cannot reply in any other 
manner—lI conclude therefrom, that the incomprehen- 
sible, notwithstanding its obscurity, does not bear 
with itself the exclusion of every rational element, 
and this is what I had to prove. Now remark atten- 
tively, it is now a question between us only of the 
general essence of the incomprehensible. You have 
said that the incomprehensible considered in itself, in 
its very nature, is an absurdity ; and, I, following you 
step by step, have had to prove to you that it is not 
so, and that to propose to man the contemplation of a 
mystery, so far from dishonouring his intelligence, is 
to elevate him to regions whose natural and sublime? 
guest he is. For, I have said, reason itself includes 
an incomprehensible element, and the incomprehen- 
sible in its turn contains a rational element ; evidence,. 


in mounting towards the higher pole of things, to which 


178 Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


itis the great road, meets obscurity there ; and mystery, 
in descending from heaven, bears to us a light worthy 
of its proper name, which is revelation. 

Hereby you see that the difference between the 
natural and the supernatural order does not consist in 
the idea that all is comprehensible in the first, 
whilst all is incomprehensible in the second, but 
in this, that the truths of the latter are not susceptible 
of a direct demonstration, whilst the truths of the 
former flow as a consequence from the luminous germ 
which is our reason. Thus God, although inscrutable 
in his essence, is a dogma of nature, because we draw 
conclusions in regard to him by the very light which 
is within us; but the unity of God in three distinct 
persons is a dogma of revelation, because it is 
impossible for us to deduce it from any rational 
principle. 

At the very last, you will perhaps think that there is 
more obscurity in the supernatural incomprehensible 
than in the natural incomprehensible. Now, f can 
but repeat to you those words of Jesus Christ, “‘ 7 am 
the light of the world; he that followeth me walketh not 
in darkness, but shall have the light of iife,”® ...And 


those other words, “ Zam come a light into the world : 


19St. John viii. 12. 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 179 


that whoever believeth in me may not remain in dark- 
ness.” And those of the Apostle St. Paul to the 
Christians of Ephesus, You were heretofore darkness, 
but now are ye light in the Lord; walk then as children 
of the light.” “Everywhere in Scripture the natural 
order compared to the supernatural order, is called 
darkness ; and the supernatural order, light, life, the 
way, the truth. It is because, however far and however 
high the most pure reason may reach, it knows God 
only by imperfect notions derived from the spectacle 
of finite things, or from the contemplation of itself. 
Now, God is all. Whoever knows him not, knows 
nothing; whoever knows. him imperfectly, knows 
imperfectly ; whoever knows but little of him, knows 
but little. And since reason approaches him but 
imperfectly, as is too manifest, it is just to say that it 
is but a faint dawn of a bright day, an enigmatical and 
painful mirror of truth. But if God, touched by our 
natural ignorance, brings to us a knowledge of himself ; 
if he reveals to us what he is, what he sees, what he 
feels, what he wills; if he opens to us the depths of 
his eternity, his action upon time, the motives and 
plans of his Providence; then doubtless our inner 


vision will discern, but with difficulty, the infinite lines 


0 St. John xii. 46, 21 Ephes, v.-8, 


180 Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 


of such revelation; it will remain under the celestial 
horizon as it is under created immensity. And yet 
who will say that he does not know more? Who will 
not call his former state darkness, and his new state 
light? I grant that the shadow increases with the 
light, but that is the law of all science and of all light. 
Is there a man of science who does not discover more 
abysses in proportion as he penetrates further into 
nature? Is there a sun whose light, falling upon a 
body, does not draw a shadow from it so much the 
deeper as its rays are the more ardent? If the finite 
itself, on becoming revealed to our vision, becomes so 
much the more mysterious as it is more visible, what 
must it be with the infinite ? 

Accept, Gentlemen, with a firm mind, that condition 
of things, that necessity of the incomprehensible which 
pursues us everywhere. March on, like Israel, under 
the guidance of that column, half cloud, half fire, the 
only one that still enlightens and guides the human 
race. Watch the cloud, in order to learn in it the 
limits of your nature; watch the light, in order to 
learn there the greatness of your destiny. Should the 
one afflict you, take comfort in the other; should the 
West trouble you, turn to the East; and, in fine, lifting 


your eyes yet higher, wait in patience and faith for the 


Mystery as the Object of Prophecy. 181 


pure day which is promised to us, and which will dawn 
from eternity for every soul worthy to behold it; for 
although the incomprehensible cannot even then 
disappear, since it belongs to the nature of the infinite 
considered by the finite, nevertheless the vision of 
God in his very substance will impart to us a possession 
of him which will transform the mystery into the joy 


of ever knowing and never exhausting our knowledge. 


ve 


mie i 
ere 
eh) ds 


Mi 


THE HUMAN ACT CORRESPONDING TO 
PROPHECY. 


Ors1 85h) 


THE HUMAN ACT CORRESPONDING TO 
PROPHECY. 


My Lorp,—GENTLEMEN, 

Having explained the nature of prophecy, and 
solved the difficulties relative to its object, we must 
now consider the act by which man, prophetically 
taught by God, corresponds to that revelation; for as 
prophecy has no other object than to establish a 
supernatural intercourse between God and man, it is 
not sufficient that God acts on his side—it is necessary 
that man should respond to him by a positive act. 
What is that act? What is the act by which man 
responds to God, inasmuch as God enlightens him 
prophetically—that is to say, manifests to him, by 
means of language, truths that surpass the power of 
his rational understanding? This act, Gentlemen, 
could not be an act of knowledge, for knowledge 
supposes demonstration, and God, in prophecy, does 


not demonstrate, he affirms with authority. He affirms, 


186 The Human Act corresponding to 


and man believes. Faith is the answer which prophecy 
solicits; not blind faith, but faith based upon the 
divine characters that surround and penetrate the 
revealing testimony. 

In our two last Conferences of the year 1836—a year 
already so distant from us—lI treated the question of 
Faith. It comes before us again, brought back by the 
inflexible enchainment of things, and I shall reject it 
so much the less as I must now consider it under a_ 
new aspect. It was necessary then more especially 
to study its nature; to-day, supposing that nature 
known, I will reply to two difficulties, and thereby 
explain to you what faith is. 

We are told, in the first place, that the act of faith, 
by which man corresponds with the divine word, is an 
act which has no parallel in the natural order, where 
all takes place by way of knowledge and demonstration ; 
and that therefore, under this head, there is an anomaly 
which destroys the synthesis between the two orders 
the natural and the supernatural. Although the 
necessity of a constant synthesis, or similitude, between 
the two orders is not clearly manifest, I shall never- 
theless prove that it exists in the case in question. 

We are told, in the second place, that the act of 


faith, being irrational in its nature, since it is not the 


Prophecy. 187 


consequence of a demonstration, man is not able to 
produce it at will, by a simple application of his 
intelligence and liberty; but that it is the fruit of 
chance, custom, certain inclinations of the soul, and 
that therefore it cannot be an absolute duty upon which 
our intercourse with God depends. I shall prove, 
against this objection, that the act of faith is a regular 
power of man, and that, revelation being known to 
him, unbelief is a free refusal on his part, consequently 
a culpable refusal, and one that severs his relations 
with divine light and love. 

Let us begin with the first difficulty—that of the 
synthesis between the natural and supernatural orders 
in regard to faith. 

You have already seen that it is not the prophetic 
revelation alone that brings into our intelligence the 
element of the incomprehensible ; reason itself is sub- 
jected thereto, and its most sensible rays merge on all 
sides into profound mysteries. At the same time that 
nature displays its phenomena, that science demon- 
strates, and the mind is satisfied by evidence, the 
incomprehensible appears and exacts from us an act 
of faith. I say an act of faith; for, in what manner 
soever the incomprehensible may be presented to us, 


even when a direct demonstration is given to us of its 


188 The Human Act corresponding to 


existence, it brings to our need of knowledge a limit 
which supposes on our part that submissive acceptation 
whose proper name is faith. Doubtless it is not faith 
of the same order as that which adheres to revealed 
dogmas guaranteed by the word of God; but it is a 
real faith given to the testimony of nature upon realities 
which it does not explain to us, and which are enveloped 
in shadows inaccessible to all the efforts of our penetra- 
tion. Therefore as the word of God makes unbelievers, 
so also do nature and science. Scepticism is no other 
thing than a revolt of reason against obscurities wherein 
it becomes lost as soon as it wills to penetrate the 
depths of truth; and this is why science as well as 
religion requires from its sectaries that humility which 
is a great part of common sense. The true sage, 
initiated to the secret of his weakness by the marvels 
which he has interrogated, bends before him who 
created the universe, and who alone knows the secret 
of all its forces. He avows that he knows nothing, 
not in an absolute sense, like the sceptic, but in the 
sense which implies a voluntary abasement of the mind 
of man before the Spirit of God, and that voluntary 
abasement, is faith itself. 

In fact, knowledge, however imperfect it may be, is 


not the general state of mankind; it is the privilege of 


Prophecy. 189 


a very small number of men scattered here and there. 
The multitude, subjected to labour which leaves them 
no leisure to cultivate their minds, are ignorant of the 
demonstration of the things which they employ and 
of the rules which they apply to their lives. Whether 
error or truth govern them, they are governed by 
persuasion and by authority—that is to say, by faith. 
They go whither they are impelled by the privileged 
batallion of the princes of the intelligence, itself 
impelled by an unknown ascendency which has its 
source in anterior ages, and in the logical current 
of all accomplished events. The revolutions of the 
human mind have no other cause, no other law; they 
never operate by way of demonstration, any more than 
battles are gained by the knowledge of the soldier. 
The soldier is ignorant of what he does and why he 
does it; immoveable under fire, or marching towards 
the enemy, he gives and receives death by orders 
whose principle he does not know, whose result is a 
mystery to the very last moment. He obeys in perils 
an invisible thought in which he has faith, and that 
faith is half of his strength. An army that doubts is 
a lost army; an army that believes commands defeat 
and draws therefrom its safety. So it is with the 


battles of the intelligence, with those great movements 


190 The Human Act corresponding to 


of opinion that lead nations to new destinies: the 
throng follow chiefs who persuade them; they obey, 
believing that they command. You have proof of this 
in the history of which you form a part. Sons of an 
epoch fertile in vicissitudes, you witness a social 
revolution which shakes Europe in its very foundations. 
How many minds, think you, are there in Europe 
capable of rendering an exact and scientific account of 
it? <A party was formed, which for sixty years directed 
opinion and dispersed popularity as a sovereign ; this 
party was supported by most of the seats of science 
and learning; its organs were a multitude of journals 
which bore its ideas to the extremities of the world; 
its subjects were governments and laws; all bent 
before it, and at length it felt sure of having founded 
an eternal empire by free discussion. But yesterday it 
still reigned; to-day it is hardly defended. Publicity, 
learning, science, liberty, its own strength and its own 
work, have turned against it, and see, it gathers around 
its ruins for its protection, the ruins which it had 
caused, and which it proudly called the relics of the 
past. How has this power been brought to an end? 
By the same power which established it, by faith. A 
new language has risen up from the general lassitude 


of minds; it has boldly anathematized the language 


Prophecy. IQ 


which preceded it, and which, although so long master, 
was found feeble in persuasion and authority. Doubt- 
less there is a cause for this, and a logical cause, but 
the multitude who are led by it do not discernit. The 
multitude changed faith in changing their chiefs. And 
never upon this earth is the language that persuades 
and commands silent for a single day. It perishes 
upon the lips of one but to be reproduced upon the 
lips of another, and should the people cease to under- 
stand it, having no longer either faith or knowledge, - 
there would remain to them of the human intelligence 
only the faculty of deeper degradation. 

But re-assure yourselves, whatever is needful to 
mankind, happen what may, will not be wanting to it. 
Knowledge will be subject to eclipses among men 
because it is the light of a small number; authority 
will outlive all its catastrophes, and if, after having 
been the organ of the opinion which it enounced, you 
lose that authority, no matter from what cause, learn 
that another will take up the sceptre as it falls from 
your hands, and that an interregnum of faith is no 
more possible here below than an interregnum of life. 

How should mankind know its own history if faith 
from man to man could be subject to any real interrup- 


tion? History is not of itself visible on the horizon 


192 The Human Act corresponding to 


of posterity; as soon as the actors and spectators of 
an age have passed away to the tomb, they disappear 
also to the generations that take their place, and the 
course of ages, following its rapid flow, rejects them 
more and more to the obscure solitude where death 
hides them. What has caused them to live again in 
spite of time? What is it that keeps the buried form 
of the ancestor standing erect before his most distant 
descendants? It is faith alone, the faith of the man 
living in the man dead, the testimony of the man who 
has seen passing from memory to memory to him who 
has not seen. Try whether any demonstration, beyond 
human authority, will bring before your eyes Sesostris 
or Cyrus, Babylon or Memphis, or any other vanished 
object of antiquity. The instrument that follows the 
heavenly bodies in the immeasurable heights of the 
firmament, can discover nothing in the narrow orbit of 
the tomb ; and the arithmetic that subjects numbers 
can neither count, range, nor sum up the dead. 
Eternity alone sees them in their order and in their 
secrets, and history, that pale copy of eternity, presents 
a representation of them to every man who believes 
inman. If you do not believe in this, mankind loses 
all traces of itself for you, and its generations are 


nothing but a fall of leaves between two summers 


Prophecy. 193 


ignoring one another. If you do believe it, no longer 
blame religion because it asks from you for God that 
faith which you have in man ; confess that it is very 
simple to know God by faith, since mankind has no 
other knowledge of itself. 

You have seen the past, let us look now at the pre- 
sent. We are to-day upon earth a thousand millions 
of men spread over four or five continents and in a 
hundred nations. How do we know one another ? 
How many have we seen of those beings, our fellow- 
creatures, who breathe the same air, who tread the 
same earth, who live in the same times, who form 
together, and in the same labour, the life of one single 
body? We have seen one or two thousand of them at 
most, and even of that number, so limited, how few 
could we name? All the rest escape us, save by 
relations which books and travellers bring to us—that 
is to say, by our faith in the recitals which they bring 
to us. 

Let us go further; let us leave our absent contem- 
poraries, and speak only of those who live with us, 
whom we meet in our public streets, and even, if you 
will, only of those who are here in Notre Dame, within 
the walls of this great cathedral of Paris. Assembled 


together in one place we see each other—it should be 


194 The Human Act corresponding to 


easy for us to know one another by direct knowledge, 
in which faith would have no part. And yet, is it so? 
What are you, and what am 1? What are your senti- 
ments, and what are my own? I shall vainly strain 
the powers of my mind in order to penetrate at a 
glance, and by a clear view, the folds of your being ; 
the gleams that come from them suffice only to attract 
or to repulse me instinctively, but not to give me the 
knowledge of your heart. Man is a soul, and the soul 
ignores the soul until a word spoken in the ear, in the 
outpourings of friendship or religion, has revealed its 
mystery and merited to hear the response, “I believe 
you.” Faith is the knot of our personal relations ; an 
untiring and a cherished mediator, it passes from friend 
to friend, from husband to wife, from the child to the 
mother, from the right that commands to the liberty 
that obeys; and in the most solemn acts of empires, 
as in the most tender effusions of love, man expresses 
himself fully by these same words, “I believe you; I 
trust in you.” It is never sold, it is given, because it 
is so priceless that whoever sells it is incapable of 
holding it. And upon those simple words, “TI trust 
you,” man risks his fortune, his life, his family, his 
honour. He believes or he is believed, and it is 


enough. Better would it be for him to lose all than to 


Prophecy. 195 


betray that faith, so low, even among the vilest actions, 
does the heart fall which is convicted of it. Even 
falsehood, although it may not bear the character of a 
treasonable act properly SO called, but by that alone 
that it does not merit the confidence which an honest 
man owes to the word of another—falsehood excites 
scorn, and in the days of chivalry our ancestors con- 
sidered as the highest of all insult those words, Zhou 
hast lied! In fact, when a man has been guilty of 
falsehood, his word exists no longer, because he merits 
no faith, and, having no word, what remains to him of 
a soul P 

But who would believe it, Gentlemen, the most 
material thing in the world, that which seems to be 
entirely subjected to the laws of arithmetic, money 
itself, is an object of faith among men. It passes from 
hand to hand, it multiplies in a fertile circulation only 
by the effect of credit, and every event that lessens 
confidence in the future lessens at the same time the 
value of money. But just now it solicited the hand to 
take it ; under the form and upon the faith of a scrap 
of paper it passed from one nation to another, every- 
where accepted under that ideal form which gave to it 
a value far beyond its real quantity ; and suddenly that 
paper falls, money is hidden, manufactories stop their 


oO 


196 The Human Act corresponding to 


works, commerce fails, labour becomes scarce—a kind 
of universal failing holds society in suspense, and 
seems to paralyse it! What powerful blow has it then 
received? JI have already told you: there has been a 
withdrawal of faith. That nation has ceased to believe 
in itself ; its moral resources are not equal to its perils ; 
and whilst Rome sold the field upon which Hannibal 
encamped, because Rome had faith in his virtue, this 
people, measuring its fate by its corruption, has givén 
itself over to the chastisement of fear. It has hidden 
its gold as the ancients, in the catastrophes of their 
country, hid their gods. Remove fear, and money, 
appearing again and circulating, will stimulate labour, 
enterprise, commerce—wealth, in fine, which, as you 
see, is a daughter of faith. 

I have said enough to show that faith plays an 
important part in the human as well as in the divine 
order, and that, therefore, there is no antithesis, but 
synthesis, between the two orders under this head. 
However, it will not be unprofitable for us, before 
leaving this part of our subject, to ask the reason of 
this ; for, if we have understood that faith is necessary 
in the relations between man and God, we do not see 
clearly why it is necessary in the relations between 


man and man. 


Prophecy. 197 


Let us learn, then, that the life of the intelligence 
proceeds from two poles—the one immutable and 
absolute, which is the pole of truth; the other move- 
able, which is the pole of liberty. Without the first, 
minds detached from any fixed point would wander at 
hazard in the night of doubt and ignorance; without 
the second, being deprived of their own movement, 
they would be nothing but the obedient satellites of a 
fatal mechanism. Their life is then at the same time 
a work of truth and of liberty. As a work of truth, it 
is an object of knowledge ; as a work of liberty, it is 
an object of faith. For as the ancients said, FLuxr 
NON EST SCIENTIA—TZ/zere is no science of that which 
passes. Now, nothing is more unstable, more rapid, 
more unforeseen than liberty, and this is why it is so 
difficult to know ourselves, all-present though we may 
be to our own hearts. What shall I do to-morrow ? 
Where will the inconstancy of my will lead me? To 
what temptations shall I be subject? Shall I yield to 
them, or shall I not yield? I may perhaps suppose, 
but I cannot be absolutely sure. A book which may 
fall into my hands, a word which I may hear, an insult 
which I may receive, a leaf which the wind may carry 
beneath my feet—I know not what, in fine—all and 


nothing may be capable of changing my sentiments 
0 2 


198 The Human Act corresponding to 


and of inspiring my will with unlooked-for resolutions. 
You ask me to give you the knowledge of myself, and 
I do not even possess it. I myself am ignorant of it. 
I am to myself an object of faith! 

It is liberty, Gentlemen, that brings into human 
things the element of faith, and makes it the only 
means by which we reciprocally know ourselves. If 
we were not free, science would dispose of us as it 
disposes of the rest of nature ; it would weigh a man 
in the same manner as it weighs a little earth, and, all 
the laws of mankind being reduced to numbers, we 
should require for our rulers only an academy of 
mathematicians. Such is also the final dream of 
materialism in regard to us. Persuaded that there is 
nothing in man but organised matter, it seeks the 
supreme combination which, keeping the passions in 
an equilibrium, would produce a purely scientific 
order wherein crime and virtue would hold neither 
place nor name. Make all men equals, for example, 
by mathematical equality ; make so many figures of 
them; distribute to them in the same measure the 
objects which flatter the senses and satisfy pride ; 
what would they need in order to be equally and 
supremely happy? Nothing, doubtless, if they were 


but bodies ; but if by chance a soul lives in them, 


Prophecy. 199 


and in that soul the liberty of volition, be sure that 
the heavens, the earth, and the sea, given in pasture 
to each of them, would not satiate the reciprocal 
jealousy of their felicity. A moment suffices for 
passion to devour worlds ; and if liberty is not the 
infinite by substance, it is the infinite by desire. This 
is why there are no mathematics of liberty, and those 
who seek its equation in matter are like that child 
whom Saint Augustine saw upon the African shore 
endeavouring to empty the sea with a shell which its 
waves had thrown up. These great calculators are 
the worst of men for the government of man: they 
are amazed at the resistance made against their 
genius, never suspecting that liberty is greater than 
any empire, stronger than any Cesar, deeper than any 
abyss, and that faith alone commands it, because faith 
is itself an act of liberty. 

Therefore, by the same reason that we are free 
beings, we are beings of faith, and we must say in the 
natural order what Jesus Christ said in a higher order, 
Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have 
believed.” ‘That is to say, blessed are they that have 
no need of demonstration, because demonstration is 


attained only by a few minds in things of secondary 


2 St. John xx. 20. 


200 The Human Act corresponding to 


degree ; whilst faith, altogether popular and sublime, 
passes from the soul of all to the soul of all, in things 
which, taking their root in liberty, are the foundation 
of human life! 

I repeat that faith is the correlative of liberty, as 
science is the correlative of necessity ; and to ask why 
we ought to believe, is to ask why we are free. From 
thence follows a consequence upon which I cannot 
be silent, and which will fitly explain to you the 
important part which faith fills in the purely natural 
order. 

Science relates to necessity—that is to say, to what is 
immutable in itself ; it suffices to have intelligence to 
be learned, it is not the same in order to be a believer. 
Faith is an act of confidence, and consequently an 
affair of the heart. It supposes in him who grants it 
the same uprightness as in him who inspires it, and no 
ungrateful man, no impostor, no egotist, nor any of 
those whom the Scripture energetically calls ‘He 
children of unbelicf> were ever capable of it. To 
confide is to give oneself; none give themselves but 
the magnanimous, or, at least, the generous—not that 
faith excludes prudence, and that it is needful to give 


ourselves up to the first word that falls from unknown 


33 Wphiiid2: 


Prophecy. 201 


lips, but because, after prudence is supposed to be 
satished, another effort is still necessary to draw from 
us that difficult word—I believe. 

Alexander, the King of Macedonia, was on the 
banks of the Cydnus. He was there attacked by a 
malady which threatened’ to save Persia, and his 
physician, whom he tenderly loved, was to prepare 
for him a decisive draught. But, in the evening, a 
_ letter, written by a known hand, warned the invalid to 
beware of his friend as a traitor who had sold his life. 
Alexander kept silence. On the morrow, when the 
cup was brought to him, he drew from his bed the 
accusing letter, gave it to his physician, took the 
cup, and swallowed its contents at a draught. — All 
antiquity has lauded this act of Alexander, and his 
most celebrated victories—Granicus, Issus, Arbela— 
have not encircled his head with more admiration. 
Upon this a celebrated writer, whom I shall not name, 
asks what is there so worthy of admiration in this act 
so highly vaunted ; for, in fine, Alexander was the 
chief of a numerous army engaged in an enemy’s 
country, the master of a rising kingdom, the man of 
Greece who was charged with its vengeances and its 
designs ; he should, on every account, have respected 


his life, upon which depended the fate of so many 


202 The Human Act corresponding to 


others ; and what merit was there in exposing it 
without defence to the chances of poison? But the 
writer whom I have quoted, after having made these 
remarks, goes on to say: “What is there so worthy 
of admiration in that action of Alexander! Unhappy 
men, could you understand it if it be needful to tell 
you? What is so worthy of admiration is, that 
Alexander believed in virtue—that he believed in it 
fully, at the peril of his life !” 

This is a magnificent explanation of the faith of a 
noble heart, and it is also the explanation of all faith, 
whether exercised towards man or towards God. 
Whoever makes an act of faith, whether he knows it 
or not, drinks the cup of Alexander; “e believes fully, 
at the peril of his life; he enters into that lineage of 
Abraham, who is called the father of all those that 
believe,* because when he was old—wasted in age, but 
not in heart—he raised his obedient knife upon his: 
only son, who was all his love and his race, hoping 
against hope in that declaration which had promised 
him a posterity. And if there be a creature who, in 
opposition to these great examples, has never drawn 
from his soul an act of faith, you may fearlessly accuse 


that creature of having dishonoured in himself the 


24 Rom. iv. 11. 


Prophecy. 203 


work of God. For faith is not only a virtue—that is 
to say, a generous and an efficacious effort towards 
good—it is the sacred portico through which all virtues 
pass—the sanguinary prodrome where the sacrifices 
commence and where the victims justly immolated 
return to the sanctuary of God. There is no act of 
devotedness, no act of love, no honourable or holy 
act which was not at first an act of faith, and this is 
the reason why the Scriptures so often declare that by 
faith man is justified and saved. The Jews imagined 
that the principle of salvation was the observance of 
the law in view of the recompenses of God; St. Paul 
unceasingly tells them that their works are powerless 
if they are not vivified by a higher element. /¢ zs one 
God, he exclaims, that justifieth circumcision by faith, 
and uncircumcision through faith.’ What are works, 
in fact, if they are performed under the impulsion of 
a purely scientific view? A simple calculation of 
interest, or of good government of ourselves and 
others. Men are just, sober, careful, industrious, 
faithful keepers of their word, because this is an order 
whose exact observance produces more than it costs : 
but place these well-regulated minds before the cup 


of Alexander—that is to say, before a sacrifice which 


25 Rom, ti. 30. 


204. The Human Act correspondtig to 


may be avoided without loss, before a virtue which 
has no visible reward—you will then learn the void in 
the heart where faith is wanting. I do not even mean 
divine faith, but that vague, unnamed, indescribable 
faith, which is the basis of all that is great. ‘Therefore, 
when St. Paul pronounced that sovereign sentence: 
Without faith it is impossible to please God,” we may 
add—and men. 

Thence comes the weakness of society in the present 
time. Never has science thrown upon things a more 
living and a more complete illumination than now ; 
nor has the social tie ever been so easy to burst in the 
hands of those who, turn by turn, endeavour to bind 
society together. It is because science is not the 
principle of the human order—it is only one of its 
glorious ornaments—and where it oppresses instead of 
sustaining faith, it is but the parricidal instrument of 
ruin wherein man will learn too late that it is necessary 
to believe in order to live a single day, even were it 
not necessary to believe in order to live eternally. 
Human faith is the life of the natural man as divine 
faith is the life of the man supernaturalized, and those 
two men forming but one, divine faith maintains 
human faith as human faith supports divine faith, 


26 Heb. xi. 6. 


Prophecy. 205 


were it but in proving the synthesis which exists 
between the two orders whose distinct, but har- 
monious, elements compose our destiny. 

This first difficulty solved, I am urged to notice a 
considerable difference between the faith that serves 
as a means of intercourse between men among 
themselves, and the faith that serves as a means of 
intercourse with God. In the former, they say, it is 
easy to see when and in what degree confidence 
should be given to purely human testimony, relating 
to things and ideas not removed from the sphere in 
which we are; in the latter, on the contrary, every 
thing surpasses our faculties—divine revelation itself, 
in its exterior signs, as well as the mysteries contained 
therein. We believe in man voluntarily and naturally, 
because man is ourselves; we believe in God by 
chance and with difficulty, because God is not 
ourselves. How, then, should we make of that 
faith the chosen instrument of our relations with 
the invisible world? Is it our fault if it does not 
subjugate our heart? You tell us that it is a result 
of persuasion : persuade us, then! Behold us at the 
foot of your pulpit; we listen to you; what hinders 


you from persuading us? Just now, in an apostrophe, 


which you thought eloquent, you told us that when 


206 The Human Act corresponding to 


language lost its authority in the world, it infallibly 
found a successor which took possession of its vacant 
throne. This is what happens to the teaching whose 
organ you are; but why impute it to us? Is it 
needful to condemn or pity us if human teaching 
has been substituted for divine teaching, if we are 
born in an age wherein man is stronger than God, 
wherein men listen to sages rather than to theologians ? 
It is possible that our generation may be decried ; but 
it is not the author of its darkness, it is its victim. 
Our fathers prepared the cup from which we drink: 
they mixed with it so much art and power that our 
lips are naturally inebriated therewith, and that our 
birth and error form but a single act in one and the 
same day. Instead of condemning us, let God, then, 
come to our help; let him speak, let him give grace 
to his word ; and if it be true that his Son, heretofore 
visible among us, did raise the dead, ah! let hin, 
then, raise up the whole human race. This is the 
real corpse. You have said that eloquence is the 
substitution of the soul that speaks for the soul that 
listens : let God, then, be eloquent! Is it too much 
to ask of him for the salvation of the world? And 
if he will not—if he does not do this—if incredulity 


remains our natural state, whilst faith is but excep- 


Prophecy. 207 


tional, why should he complain? Is it because we 
are such as he has created us ? | 

Gentlemen, your objection supposes that divine or 
religious faith is an accident of the human mind, and 
already many times, in the course of these Conferences, 
I have proved to you that it was the universal, per- 
petual, and public state of mankind. I proved it to 
you again this very year, at the beginning of our 
quadragesimal reunion, and without returning to that 
historical demonstration, I will limit myself to one 
remark—it is, that there have been in the world only 
two epochs where incredulity has had any hope of 
domination: the Augustan age and our own; the 
Augustan age, which saw the Roman Republic perish, 
and our own, which has as yet produced only tempests 
—two epochs in six thousand years, both marked by 
the signs and the effects of decline. Not that I would 
prophecy your ruin; even in the Augustan age it was 
not ruin: the unbelief of the ancient world was the 
happy forerunner of a new world, the Christian world. 
So will it be with you. Your bark quivers and sinks, 
but the wave that draws it into the abyss will lift it 
towards heaven, and your posterity, guided to the 
‘haven, will admire in your history and in its own a 


new proof that unbelief, so far from being a station of 


208 The Human Act corresponding to 


mankind, is hardly a danger for it. Already certain 
foreshadowings of the future justify this presentiment, 
and even if my hope be not a proof for you, it will 
always remain that the only epoch of incredulity of 
which we know the integral development was followed 
by the exaltation of Christianity—that is to say, of 
the greatest and most memorable expansion of faith 
which has ever taken place in the human race. This 
suffices to give me the right to conclude that divine 
or religious faith is not an accident of our mind, but 
its general and true condition, and that man believes 
in God as spontaneously as he believes in man. I do 
not say that he so believes without an effort, and even 
without a struggle. Nothing is more natural to man 
than to live, and yet life is not a thing that does not 
cost any effort. Life is a labour and a struggle ; how 
much more should faith be so, since faith, in its very 
definition bears the idea of a virtue, and since all 
virtue is a laborious effort, because of the passions 
which are opposed to its reign over the soul! 

Do not wonder, then, that it requires some care to 
believe, as well as to be just, true, chaste, an honest man, 
and wonder even that so little is needed, faith being 
not only a human but a divine virtue, and the gate of all 


the virtues that lead to God. You do not believe, and 


ye el ge NN ee ee 


ee ee ee 


a a 


Prophecy. 209 


you conclude that faith is impossible; for my part, I 
conclude that you do not do what is necessary in 
order to believe, and I shall prove this to you in a 
few words. 

The first cause of unbelief is voluntary ignorance. 
Faith cannot be acquired any more than knowledge 
without a certain application of the mind. As soon 
as the mind does not apply itself, it is inert, it ceases 
to be a power, it is in regard to the object from which 
it turns away as if it were not. What are mathematics 
for a mind which has never reflected on the laws of 
number, extent, and motion? What is philosophy for 
aman who has never asked himself what are being, 
idea, the absolute, the relative, cause and effect? And, 
by the same reason, what is faith for a soul which has 
never seriously thought on the necessary relations 
between the creature and God. 

Gentlemen, be true to yourselves ; at what age and 
after what studies have you decided that religion is an 
error? At the age of forty? No, you decided it in 
the flower of your age, at the moment when, rising 
from infancy, reasoning and passion made their joyous 
appearance together on the agitated surface of your 
being. Simple and subject up to that time, pious 


adorers of the thoughts of your mother, you had 


210 The Human Act corresponding to 


interrogated nothing, contested: nothing—you lived 
upon a faith as pure as your heart. But hardly had 
that double puberty of man made known its living 
sting to your senses and your mind, than, without giving 
yourselves time to ripen your power, impatient of 
the mysteries of nature, and the mysteries of God, 
you were seized with shame at believing at the same 
time as you lost that other shame which is the divine 
guardian of innocence. As yet incapable of a virile 
act, you nevertheless pronounced sovereignly upon 
man and upon God; you doubted, denied, apostatized, 
despised your fathers, accused your masters, traduced 
before your tribunal the virtues and the sufferings of 
ages—made, in fine, of your soul a desert of pride. 
Then, that ruin accomplished, you chose for your 
object one of the ambitions of man—the glory of 
arms, letters, or of something less elevated, as the case 
may be, and all the effort of your faculties is employed 
towards the idolatry of your future. You have learned 
nothing more than to be one day the actual hero of 
your dreams. You have sacrificed your days and 
nights to that egotistical image, reserving no hidden, 
no unknown part of them, save only for that other 
egotism of man, sensuality. And never, during that 


double and sad dream; has religion appeared to you 


Prophecy. 200 


other than as a futile recollection of your early years, 
a weakness or hypocrisy of humanity. You have not 
deigned to give to it an hour, a thought, a desire; and 
if, perchance, attracted by a celebrated name, you 
have passed the threshold of a book or a temple, you 
have done so in the haughtiness of a mind which had 
judged and which did not intend to change its sentence. 
O confidence of youth in error! O security of souls 
who have as yet seen nothing of life but its dawn! 
Oh! how good God has been not to call us at that 
hour of ignorance and enchantment! For, already 
the greater number among you are not in the state of 
simple certainty; time has brought back to you doubt 
and obscure presentiments of truth. You understand 
that your unbelief is the result of a puerile act of 
weakness, and that for your honour and your repose, 
it needs a ratification. 

It is this second work, this work of return and 
examination, that founds faith in man and maintains it 
in mankind. Faith, doubtless, is also a gift of infancy ; 
it throws out its roots in the soul entering into 
existence, but it is the tardy action of life that brings 
it to its maturity. When man has seen man during a 
long series of years, when he has known his weakness 
and misery by experience which leaves him no more 


P 


212 The Human Act corresponding to 


doubt, and already the mighty form of death brings 
nearer to him the last of the prophecies, then his look 
becomes naturally more profound. He discerns better 
the divine trace, because he knows better what man 
cannot do, and the lassitude of present things creates 
for him also a taste for things unseen. Therefore a 
writer, whose name I cannot now remember, has well 
said: ‘At twenty, men believe religion to be false ; 
at forty, they begin to suspect that it may be true; at 
fifty, they desire that it may be true; at sixty, they no 
longer doubt its truth.” Light advances step by step 
with life, and death, by disabusing us of all things, 
completes that continued revelation whose first words 
we heard from the lips of our mother. The infant 
and woman are the vanguard of God; the full man 
is his apostle and martyr; you, young men, are but 
deserters for a day from him. 

I know that voluntary ignorance does not of itself 
explain the painful phenomenon of unbelief, and that 
there are men versed in religious things who do not 
attain to the happiness of faith. Such examples are 
rare, but I have met with them. They are victims of 
a passion which is the most obstinate of all, the pride 
of knowledge. The pride of knowledge is that infatua- 


tion of a mind intoxicated with itself, which sees itself 


Prophecy. 278 


in what it knows, like Narcissus in the lake, and which, 
considering every limit as an insult to its capacity, 
presumes to treat with God as between equal and 
equal. Such aman no longer studies from a love of 
truth, but against it; he rejoices in gathering clouds 
around it, in finding a grain of sand which may be 
made a blasphemy, and which he may hurl against 
Heaven. Does he watch the firmament, it is but to 
draw forth from it the secret of the eternity of the 
world ; does he descend into the bowels of the earth, 
it is but to seek for arms against a great biblical fact ; 
does he interrogate the necropolis of Egypt or the 
ruins of Babylon, it is but to endeavour to find there 
a voice that denies something of the most ancient 
traditions. His knowledge is Lu a stubborn duel 
between himself and God. 

Who could remain true under the influence of such 
a passion? Who would accept it as a judge? Faith, 
we have said, is an act of confidence ; it supposes the 
sincerity of an upright and a loving heart. Now, the 
men of whom I speak would not even believe in 
mathematical demonstrations if their object and end 
were the truths of the religious order. Like Jean 
Jacques, they would rather declare themselves to be 


mad than say they were convinced. And indeed this 


PQ 


214 The Human Act corresponding to 


is not an imaginary picture. Consult the recollections 
of your own conscience. Have you never felt a thrill 
of joy on discovering something in history or in nature 
that appeared to you to be stamped with an anti- 
Christian sign? Have you never clapped your hands 
on hearing it said, Here is an argument against Jesus 
Christ? Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you 
shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened to you.” Such 
is the first condition for arriving at faith, The sun 
halts in vain in the height of the firmament, if his light 
is but a reason for us to refuse to acknowledge his 
presence. 

In fine, a third cause of unbelief is the depravity of 
morals. I will not say that all the weaknesses of our 
frail flesh are obstacles to faith, since faith is itself the 
principle of chastity, and since Jesus Christ pronounced 
against the Pharisees that divine saying, Zhe women 
whom you call lost shall go into the kingdom of God 
before you.® There is a form of vice which is humble, 
which knows itself, which despises itself, which beats 
its breast. I will not say that it is agreeable to God, 
but God is able to heal it, as he healed Magdalene. 
On the other hand, there is a vice poisoned with pride, 
which raises its head, which laughs and mocks. ‘This 


27 St. Matt. vii, 7. 28 St. Matt. xxi. 31. 


Prophecy. 215 


vice God hates ; it is an almost invincible obstacle to 
faith, because it is the re-union of two kinds of per- 
versity, which naturally exclude one another, and whose 
meeting takes from the soul the last resources of good. 
Pride alone of itself is so insupportable to God, that 
he prefers humble vice to haughty virtue. How, then, 
must he regard proud vice? Now, nothing is less rare 
than that lamentable disposition of the heart; slaves 
as they are to the most vile inclinations and the most 
shameful practices, they plume themselves in the pride 
of a pure conscience; they appeal from it to their 
honour, their probity, their genius, and cover with the 
name of amiable weaknesses the prostitution of all 
the senses to voluptuousness. They employ half a 
century in perverting the ignorance of youth and the 
beauty of virtue around them, and after having driven 
to shame a number of souls, whose ruin they do not 
even deign to respect in their memory, instead of 
saying to God with St. Peter, Depart from me; for Lam 
a sinful man, O Lord,’® they complain of the little 
light which God has thrown upon his works, and 
impute to him their misfortune of not knowing and 
serving him. Do you believe, Gentlemen, that miracles 
-are due to such complainings, and that God is at fault 


St. Luke v.. 3. 


216 The Human Act corresponding to 


for not answering them otherwise than by silence and 
coldness? Oh! yes, the women whom you call lost wilt 
go into the kingdom of God before you, because nearly all 
of them have been victims before having been merce- 
naries, and because from the depth of their abasement 
they sometimes raise towards God that plaintive and 
humble look which is more than remorse, if it be not 
yet virtue. God will hear them ; he hears the faintest 
sigh that is sincere, and he perfects every tear which 
has begun to form for time. But he despises the pride 
of ignorance, the pride of knowledge, and the pride of 
vice ; he will await them on the day when, in presence 
of the assembled universe, angels will sing again the 
hymn of God made man, Glory to God in the highest, 
and on earth peace to men of good will. 

Gentlemen, I shall not conclude without casting a 
thought upon the great week whose doleful events we 
are about to celebrate. It was the week of our salva- 
tion, and it is so now. From that cross which the 
Church has just covered with a veil, not to hide it 
from us, but to make its mourning more apparent and 
more bitter to us, for nearly twenty centuries justice 
and love have appealed to you. Listen to them now, 
and do not disdain such great patience in so much 


0. St. Luke ii. 14. 


Prophecy. 217 


light. You, to whom age gives warning of serious 
things, listen to the counsel of time, which for you 
joins to the voice of God. You, to whom youth 
promises long hours of grace, listen to what is most 
touching for you in the cruel appeal of the Passion. 
It is written that after the arrest of the Saviour, when 
all his disciples had left him, a young man was seen 
following him having a linen cloth cast about his 
naked body. ‘The guards seized upon him in order to 
take him, but, casting off the linen cloth, he fled from 
them naked. ‘That young man was yourselves; it was 
the youth which should one day spring from Christianity 
no longer dishonoured by hopeless vices, but subject 
to seductions and returns to good, preserving in evil 
the search after good, incapable of persecuting the just 
and following him at a distance in the shadows of the 
world with sympathetic presentiments. Such were you 
on the eve of the Passion; in that young man, your 
precursor, such are you now. You are naked, you are 
wrapped in the linen sheet of death and sin, and whilst 
here you listen uncertain to the spotless word of truth, 
perhaps Providence will touch you-with that blessed 
hand which has made and which seeks man. Ah! I 
_ conjure you not to fly from him ; leave him your linen 


garment by giving him your hearts. 


“as A 
pee & ay) 

a as ef 
Fin tiie te 


ware: 


> 


SACRAMENT. 


. 

= 
- 
5 
I 


> 


— 
iS) 
LS) 
mH 

we 


SACRAMENT. 


My Lorp,—GENTLEMEN, 

Prophecy does not suffice for the supernatural 
intercourse between man and God. Prophecy en- 
lightens the intelligence by elevating it to ideas which 
the spectacle of finite things would not inspire ; but 
the intelligence is only a part of man, and in order to 
be moved, it depends upon a faculty which rouses it 
and is the mainspring of all our actions, although it 
is subject in its turn to the influence of the doctrines 
deposited in the understanding—I mean the will. The 
will is the principle of free activity. If it were to halt 
in the orbit of nature whilst the intelligence mounts 
higher, there would be discord in the tendencies of our 
being, and the work of divine communion would not 
be accomplished. It is needful that the will should 
recelve a supernatural impulsion at the same time as 
the intelligence receives an illumination of the same 


order, and that thus all our faculties should advance 


222 Sacrament, 


together to the conquest and full possession of the 

infinite. This is why the Spirit of God, which is called 

the Spirit of truth, is also called the Spirit of power,® 

and Jesus Christ, in promising this Spirit to his apostles, 

announced it to them under that double form—the 

one of light, the other of power, or virtue. And 

unquestionably, in the prophetic action, this double 

effusion is produced. Illuminative grace includes also 

an attractive grace, but which, although sufficient to 

aid the will, is not sufficient to found in it the constant 

reign of divine justice, life, and love. As Jesus Christ, 
after having revealed to his apostles the mystery of 
the Gospel and after having begun in them the work 

of regeneration, fulfilled it by the gift of the Holy 

Spirit which was to confirm them by his omnipotent 

power, so every soul already prepared by the hearing 

of the word of God, should resort to sacrament in 

order to derive from it the vivifying virtue which exalts 

the will, and establishes it in the plenitude of the 

rights and functions of the supernatural order. 

What, then, is Sacrament? If I limited myself to 
showing you what it is in the religious sense, perhaps 
you would not understand me; but I am sure that in 
considering it in a higher manner—that is to say, in 


31 St. John xiv. 17. 2 Actsi..S. 


Sacrament. 220 


its metaphysical and absolute nature—you will be 
constrained to respect it, if even you are not yet 
induced to practise it. 

I propose, then, again this question, and I ask in 
an abstract and general sense, What is Sacrament ? 

Sacrament thus considered is no other thing than 
an instrument—that is to say, an organism which 
contains a force. The idea of force is the parent idea 
of sacrament, and it is consequently impossible for us 
to reason about it if we do not know beforehand what 
force is. When we were treating of prophecy, the 
fundamental question was, What is truth? When 
sacrament is under discussion, the fundamental ques- 
tion is, What is force ? 

It seems, Gentlemen, easy to answer this’ question ; 
for ever since we have been in the world, and at each 
moment of our life, we have performed, and we still 
perform, only.acts of force or weakness ; and weakness 
itself is but a force inferior to what is required for the 
object to which we apply it.. If you walk, it is a 
display of force ; if you sit, it is the display of another 
force ; if you stand up, it is still force. And so it is 
with all our outward actions, with all those that are 
performed by the organs of the body. The movements 
of the soul, whatever they may be, depend upon the 


224 Sacrament. 


same principle, and follow the same law. Are you 
bold in danger? It is force. Are you above the 
seductions of the world and the senses? It is force. 
Are you firm in your resolutions? It is force. Are 
you cast down by grief or fear? It is force that grows 
less in you, and if you did not retain it by an effort 
against your impressions, life would slowly and pain- 
fully escape from you. Life is but a tissue of actions 
which proceed from a force more or less energetic, 
more or less imperfect, whose seat is at the same time 
the soul and the body. 

If from man you pass to nations, you will find there 
no other spectacle. Nations begin by an act of 
energy, they live upon a principle which formed them, 
and they expire from physical and moral exhaustion. 
Their history lasts as long as their power, and their 
power as long as that force lasts which collects all the 
others in its essence and in its name—virtue. 

The universe, in its turn, says the same thing to us 
as man and nations. All those immense orbs which 
compose its architecture obey two forces—one of pro- 
jection, which impels them in a right line; the other 
of attraction, which calls them to repose in a fixed 
centre—and, dividing between these two contrary 


impulses, they describe that constant and glorious 


Sacrament. 225 


curve which unceasingly dispenses to us light, heat, 
time, space, and harmony. | 
All is then force in heaven and upon earth, because 
all is action, and science, of whatever nature it 
may be, to whatever object it may be applied, is 
employed solely in calculating forces, some physical, 
others moral, mathematical, metaphysical or abstract, 
and, in fine, beyond all things and all number, the 
most elevated speculation encounters, under the name 
of God, the supreme, eternal, infinite, immutable force, 
from whence flows, in each being, by measured partici- 
pation, the germ of activity. Consequently nothing 
should be more familiar and more known to us than 
force. And yet, precisely because force is a primary 
element of our thought, I can only imperfectly define it 
to you, less by its essence than by its effects. I shall] 
say, then, that it is the energy of a being, holding 
existence in itself by means of an effort of concen- 
tration, or diffusing it without by means of a movement 
of dilation. Every act of force reduces itself to this. 
Either we restrain ourselves within ourselves, in order 
to concentrate our life, and give to ourselves the 
highest possible sensation of it, or we diffuse our life, 
in order to communicate it to others, and according to 


the degree of that double tension, we produce, to a 


220 Sacrament, 


greater or less degree, the incomprehensible pheno- 
menon which we call force. The hand contracted to 
refuse, is the symbol of the force of concentration ; 
the hand open to consent, is the symbol of the 
force of expansion ; and if you recall to mind the acts 
perpetually renewed which form the life of man and 
nature, you will find nothing in them which does not 
conclude in that alternative movement which our heart 
unceasingly manifests physically and morally. 

The force of concentration at its height, is eternity. 
He alone possesses it, who, in an unique, indivisible, 
and absolute moment, feels in himself and for ever the 
infinite sensation of being, and is able to say, 7 am 
who am. The force of expansion at its height, is 
creation; He alone possesses it who, sufficing to 
himself in the plenitude of existence, is able to call 
into life, without losing anything of his own, who and 
what he will—bodies, spirits, worlds—and this always 
in untold ages and unbounded space. Such is God. 

Now God, in giving us being, has given us force, 
without which no being could comprehend itself, and 
he has given it to us in its double element—one by 
which we have duration, another which enables us to 
multiply ourselves ; one by which we tend to the act 


33 Exodus iii, 14. 


Sacrament. 1287 


of eternity, the other by which we tend to the act of 
creation. But between God and ourselves, under this 
relation, there is a great and capital difference. God 
possesses of himself the force of concentration and 
expansion, whilst we have it only as a loan, by means 
of the instruments which the divine providence has 
prepared for us. Therefore, living beings as you are, 
you would make vain efforts to live by the sole aliment 
of your substance, and the sole command of your 
wants. Were you, like Ugolino, shut up in a tower, 
with your children at your feet crying to you in all the 
tortures of inanition—you men, you fathers—it would 
be impossible for you to draw forth from the most 
energetic action of your soul anything but despair or 
resignation. You would be compelled to fall powerless 
upon the bodies of your children who had fallen from 
the same cause. Doubtless the force of your will 
would more or less retard that catastrophe of hunger. 
The soul sustains the body combating against affliction 
and death, and martyrs have been seen in whom the 
divine assistance seemed to delight in braving tyrants, 
and in surpassing the genius of cruel inflictions by the 
patient courage of faith. But that exaltation of virility, 
whilst being the triumph of virtue, does but lead it 
gloriously to the tomb; it must succumb in the 
Q 


228 Sacrament. 


material order, and bear witness that no creature 
possesses of itself the right or power of immortality. 
Life is in us on condition of our maintaining it by 
something other than ourselves—that is to say, by 
means of the instruments to which God has com- 
municated force to retain and sustain our own, If 
nature did not bear us like a mother in her bosom, if 
nature did not, with inexhaustible fecundity, prepare 
for us the milk of the plant and the blood of the 
animal, our life would not even be a dream. We 
subsist by the invisible force contained in a visible 
organism, and sacrament or the instrument being no 
other thing, we must conclude that we subsist by the 
natural and daily use of sacraments. 

So it is in regard to the force of expansion. If you 
would act outwardly upon the being the least capable 
of resisting, you cannot do so directly by a simple act 
of the will. In vain would you command a grain of 
sand to move out of your way. God moves the universe 
without even speaking to it; as fcr you, an atom 
braves your commands. You call to it, you command 
it to be gone. It is silent, and it despises your orders. 
If you would remove it, your hand must bend even to 
the earth, and cast from you the insolent dust which 


scorned the desire and power of man. But the body 


Sacrament. 229 


is a limited instrument, a slight increase of resistance, 
and the force which your body contains no longer, — 
suffices to maintain your empire ; you must seek help 
for it, and add to its action the foreign action of the 
lever. The lever itself must increase in proportion to 
the weight which it is required to lift, and with that 
material aid resting on a fulcrum, you build your 
palaces, your temples, your tombs, all those monuments 
conceived by your genius, but executed by your hands 
aided by a mean organism. You might even, said Archi- 
medes, displace all the worlds with the lever, by giving 
it sufficient length and finding for it a fulcrum capable 
of bearing its'weight, and the effort of its movement. 
Glory to you, Gentlemen, but glory to you because 
you know how to employ instruments capable of 
raising even to heaven the ambition of your works ! 
Without their help, you would know nothing of the 
firmament but its appearances, of the earth but its 
surface, of history but a vague and limited remembrance, 
_of yourselves but the narrow limit of your faculties. 
The instrument is your whole force, without as well as 
within, in the order of expansion as in the order of 
concentration. But the instrument and sacrament 
being the same thing, what shall we say, but that man 
is nothing save by sacrament—that sacrament is his 


Q 2 


230 Sacrament. 


life, his power, his sovereignty, his immortality? I say 
this after having proved it, and that you may not be 
left in wonder thereat, I desire to learn why it is so, 
-and to show it to you. 

Why, then, does our force come to us from without ? 
‘Why does it come to us from a source inferior to us? 
—or, at least, why can we only sustain and develop that 
which is our own by the help of something foreign to 
us, and which is contained in the lowest regions of 
nature? Why, Gentlemen? Is it so difficult to under- 
stand? If we possessed the force of concentration 
and expansion of ourselves, as that double force is the 
essence of life, we should have life in us and by us; 
we should be to ourselves our subsistence and our 
reason of being, we should be God; or, at least, not 
having consciousness of the silent and insensible action 
by which God would inwardly infuse life to us, we 
should easily believe that we possessed it of ourselves, 
_ and that, instead of rising in humble gratitude towards 
the author of that magnificent gift, we should halt at 
ourselves as before our principle and our end. Our 
greatness would deceive us, and nature being under 
cour feet only an observant and a passive slave, we 
should draw from it the idea that it is not distinct from 


man, and by a pantheism which would justify its 


Sacrament. 231 


obedience, we should adore in nature the reverberation 
of our sovereign majesty. God was too just; he was 
too much a father to deliver us to such easy risings of 
pride; he made us first among visible beings, but in 
warning us of our dependance towards him by the 
state of dependance in which we are towards the whole 
of creation. We command. only on condition of 
obeying ; we live only by soliciting life; we act only 
by the help of the dust which soils our feet. God, in 
giving us a soul greater than heaven and earth, has 
not permitted it of itself alone to vivify the glebe of 
the body which it inhabits, and to communicate to it 
an action equal to its volitions. He has placed an 
intermediary between us and force; he has hidden it 
in the bosom of nature, under forms which we accept 
without understanding them, and the employment of 
which necessarily but partially humbles our pride, 
because we have the glory of discovering them, and 
because we believe that we make them our servitors 
by proving the law by which we depend upon them. | 
But since you despise the supernatural sacrament, 
learn at least the value of the natural sacrament. 
You, the kings of the world—you can live only by 
“eating; only by sitting at a table, and devouring 


blood, flesh, herbs, which you dispute with the beasts 


232 Sacrament. 


of the field; only by bearing within you an inexpli- 
cable transmutation of inanimate matter into the 
glorious and living substance of man. You, the kings 
of the world, for whom this earth is too limited—you 
cannot lay two stones one upon another save by the 
help of an instrumentation which subjects your genius 
to a piece of dead wood. For what is a lever? A 
lever is a pole. Yes, proud men, mathematicians, 
savants, artists, to found this temple in which I speak 
to you, you require a pole! Your thought conceived 
it, but it was a pole placed across another pole that 
built it. 

And yet, where is the scholar in philosophy whom 
the idea of sacrament has not revolted? What young 
mind, exercising in mathematics by calculating forces, 
has not laughed at the idea of sacrament? He who 
daily employs it with imperturbable faith, who advances 
surrounded by instruments, who counts, weighs, mea- 
sures, observes by instruments—he who stands wonder- 
ing before a machine, and who never contemplates a 
collection of them in the museums of science without 
a feeling of pride—he, that same man, passing before 
a church, cannot suppress a smile at the thought that 
there are reasonable beings availing themselves of 


something which they call sacraments. Ah! yes, 


Sacrament. 233 


Gentlemen, the Christian lives by sacraments as you 
live. by them—religion has its sacraments as science 
has its sacraments, and, before complaining of this, 
it would have been but just to learn whether such 1s 
not the universal mode of life; for itis hard to live by 
the very thing which we despise the most. 

Had God created man only for time and space, he 
would have given to him only the force corresponding 
to time and space, and the only instruments known to 
us would have been natural instruments. But such 
was not the vocation of man. God having placed him 
in the world from a motive of goodness, willed to 
communicate to him his perfection and his beatitude 
—at first indirectly, under a finite, representative, and 
enigmatical form, which constitutes the order of nature ; 
next directly, by a higher effusion of light and love, 
which should prepare man, by means of his free co- 
operation, to see and possess fully the author of all 
good, In a word mighty and wonderful, but a word 
taken from Scripture, and brought even to us by 
Christian tradition, the final end of man is his deifica- 
tion—that is to say, so intimate a union with God 
that; without destroying our personality, it should 
make us partakers of the divine life and the divine 


nature. This is what the apostle St. Peter wrote in 


234 Sacrament. 


these terms to the faithful of his times: Szmon Peter, 
servant and apostle of Fesus Christ, to them that have 
obtained equal faith with us in the justice of our God and 
Saviour Fesus Christ: Grace to you, and peace be 
accomplished in the knowledge of God, and of Christ 
Fesus our Lord, . .  .. by whom he hath gwen us 
the most great and precious promises: that by these you 
nay be made partakers of the divine nature”** And St. 
Paul, writing to the Hebrews, said to them: For we 
are made partakers of Christ: yet so if we hold the 
bevinning of his substance firm unto the end.” And at 
every page of the Gospel eternal 4ife—that is to say, 
the life of God—is promised to us as the reward of 
our works performed in the faith and fulfilment of the 
divine :plan in regard to us. Now, the life of God, 
consisting in an infinite force of concentration, which 
is eternity, and in an infinite force of expansion, which 
is creative charity, it is this double infinite force which 
should be initially communicated to us in order that 
we may respond, even here below, to the marvellous: 
vocation of omnipotent goodness. I have not now to 
discuss that vocation. I have already done so, and if 
I had not it is unimportant. Is there any soul here 


who accepts time and space as his destiny? Do we 


349 Ep. St. Pet. i. 1, and foll. 8 Heb. iii. 14. 


Sacrament. 235 


not all, believers and unbelievers, hold the faith that 
space is not our horizon, that time is not our measure, » 
that we pass beyond and higher, and that the present 
life is but the painful portico of a greater futurer >» Yes, 
save the atheist—and ought I even to except him ?— 
save the atheist, there is no man who does not feel a 
germ of divinity. Therefore, we are all able to die for 
our ideas and our affections, for truth and justice, 
because, all feeble as we are, we feel on certain occa- 
sions so vivid an impression of the God obscure who 
is within us, that death appears to us as a fiction, and 
the duty of dying an immortality. 

Ah! I thank God, that in this great mystery of our 
union with him, there is dissent among us only as to 
the mode and the degree! I thank him, I bless 
him for this ; I feel happy and full of joy to find one 
point in hope and in the infinite, where, whoever we 
may be—ancients or moderns, pagans, Mussulmans, 
heretics, unbelievers—-we meet, and for once under- 
stand each other! Hail, promised land of man, 
duration which will no longer be a beginning and 
an end, incomprehensible substance which will bear 
us without increasing or lessening, air, light, heat, 

_respiration of our soul—hail! We do not all under- 


stand thee in the same manner, we do not all possess 


236 Sacrament. 


the same certainty of thee, but we all possess, even in 
the despair of suicide, thy inexplicable augury: and 
if thou art, if thy dawn seen from so far deceives 
not the heart of man, what canst thou be but God ? 
What other land, what other heaven, what other 
ocean but God, could bring to our weary minds a 
better vision than the vision of the present? Yes, even 
here below, for all of us, God is our perspective, he 
is our aliment; even when we have driven him from 
us, he still dwells in us plaintive and consoling, like 
those unknown winds which pass in the evening over 
the desolate summit of the high mountains, and gently 
agitate some solitary plant which the pious hand of 
the traveller has never touched. 

God is our future, or we have no future ; we shall 
fall into his life, or we shall fall into death—the one or 
the other. Immortality without intimate union with 
God is the abstract dream of. beatification, or the 
adulterous dream of infinite materialism. I do not 
believe that your hope has fallen so low, and con- 
sequently you must eternally enjoy God if you are not 
to perish eternally. 

To enjoy God, to be in God and with God, plunged 
into his bosom as we are in nature, such is the vocation 


of man, and that vocation cannot have been given 


Sacrament. 237 


without a corresponding force to prepare us, in this 
world, for our final state. As beings destined to a. 
transformation in the infinite, we should somewhere 
derive the efficacious germs of that divine change. As 
nature pours out its treasures for us to maintain our 
terrestrial life, God necessarily pours out also his own 
to elevate us to his life, and, according to the general 
law of the communication of forces, it is by an instru- 
ment that supernatural energy is presented to, and 
incorporates itself in, us. 

Jesus Christ, having sat down by a well in the land 
of Samaria, saw a woman come there who began to 
draw up water, and he said to her: Woman, give me to 
drink. . . . Then the Samaritan woman said to him: 
flow dost thou, bang a Few, ask of me to drink, who 
am a Samaritan woman? ... Jesus answered and 
said to her: Zf thou diast know the gift of God, and 
qwho he ts that saith to thee: Give me to drink, thou 
perhaps wouldst have asked of him, and he would have 
given thee living water. ‘That woman, full of the 
obscurities of man, and who represents so well to us 
the poverty of our reasonings, replied to her inter- 
locutor : Sz, thou hast nothing wherein to draw, and 
the well is deep; from whence then hast thou living water ? 


Jesus, not wearying of showing mercy, which had been 


238 ~ Sacrament. 


twice rejected, replied to her: Whosoever drinketh of 
this water shall thirst again: but he that shall drink of 
the water that I will give him shall not thirst for ever ; 
but the water that L will give him shall become in him a 
well of water springing up into life everlasting.® Such 
is the difference between the sacrament of nature and 
the sacrament of grace—in the one and in the other 
the force is contained in a sensible element; but the 
first communicates only a passing life, the second 
gives a life that springs up into eternity, because it 
nourishes the soul with God. 

Nourishes the soul with God! What an expression, 
you will say, and what reality can it signify? We can 
conceive that a body may be nourished by another 
body, since both are of the same nature and are 
composed of parts which may be indefinitely divided ; 
but how can a simple substance, such as the soul, be 
nourished by another substance still more simple, such 
as the essence of God? Doubtless a spirit is not 
nourished like a body; yet-it is not in vain that 
human tongues possess the tradition of those bold 
figures, and transport to the spiritual life the operations 
of the animal life. Being, in whatever rank of honour 


or inferiority God may have established it, lives only 


6 St:cJonn iv. 7 and foll. 


Sacrament. 239 


by the forces received from without, and the eminent 
act by which it receives and assimilates these forces, 
is the very act of receiving nourishment. Now the 
spirit receives and assimilates forces as well as bodies, 
consequently it receives nourishment; and if the 
forces which vivify or sustain it are given to it of 
God by an immediate effusion, it is eloquently and 
truly said to nourish itself with God. However, the 
expression is of little importance, provided that the 
thing exists. God, in the supernatural sacrament, 
communicates to the soul a force of expansion which 
bears it directly towards himself, and a force of con- 
centration which attaches it intimately to himself, and 
if you are weary of expressions borrowed from the 
physical sciences, I will say to you in the language of 
St. Paul: CHaritas DEI DIFFUSA EST IN CORDIBUS 
NOSTRIS. PER SPIRITUM SANCTUM QUI DATUS EST 
nopis— Zhe charity of God is poured forth in our 
hearts by the Holy Ghost who ts given to us.” Charity, 
that is to say love, which does not come from flesh 
and blood but from the beauty of God presented to 
the soul by faith—charity is that force of expansion 
and concentration which unites us supernaturally to 
. God. By charity, we raise ourselves above the senses 


Roma Vase 


240 Sacrament. 


and above all the enchantments which the visible 
world offers to us; by charity, having once seen the 
divine personality in the figure of Christ, we find 
therein more pleasure, more peace, more joy, more 
delight than in any created thing, and as the patriarchs 
under the nuptial tent forgot the death of their mother, 
we forget ourselves and lose ourselves in that super- 
human love. We pass into God, and embracing him 
with all our strength in an ‘inexplicable certainty of 
possessing him, we draw from him a part of his life in 
abandoning to him all our own. 

Who among you, having been loved, and supposing 
that we are able to love God, does not understand 
what I mean? Who among you has not known that 
movement of the heart, which pours out itself and finds 
itself again in another? Even inanimate creatures 
possess its instinctive secret; they seek each other, 
and unite by secret affinities, and those famous laws 
which lead the celestial bodies are but the sensible 
revelation of the forces which move us in God in the 
mystery of initial and consummated beatification. 

Perhaps you do not deny these forces, or that love 
in all its degrees is their principle ; but you wonder 
that, in the supernatural or religious order, they should 


be communicated to us under a form so humble, so 


Sacrament. 241 


little in relation with themselves, as sacrament. In 
the natural sacrament or instrument, say you, there 
is proportion between the cause and the effect. I take 
a lever, I move a body, the effect is natural like its 
cause : but what relation can be discovered between 
a few drops of water poured upon the head of a man, 
and his transformation in God by charity ? 

Pibhe objection supposes that in the natural sacrament 
there is proportion between the cause and the effect : 
I deny it. I now maintain that between the lever and 
the body moyed by it, there exists no more relation 
than between the water which baptizes and the soul 
which is purified by that water. What, indeed, is a 
lever? I have already said it is a piece of dead 
wood placed upon another piece of dead wood, which 
serves it as a fulcrum. This definition is not scientific, 
but it cannot be contested. Now, is it there, in this 
inert organism, where lies the force that will lift the 
weight? Not in the least degree. The weight would 
remain eternally motionless if my arm did not give an 
impulsion to the lever, and my arm itself would remain 
still if my will did not command it to move and 
strengthen it so much the more as the obstacle of the 
weight is greater. Where, then, is the force? It is 


not in the lever, since it needs to be moved by the 


242 Sacrament. 


arm ; it is not in the arm, since it needs to be moved 
by my will: it is in the will which moves the lever 
by the arm—that is to say, in a faculty of the soul, in 
the mind. Now, I ask you, what natural relation is 
there between the mind and the movement of a 
body ? 

The lever alone could do nothing, my arm alone 
could do nothing ; they were both inactive, incapable, 
dead: an order of my will weighing upon my arm, 
has weighed upon the lever, which, in its turn, has 
given an irresistible impulsion to the body. And you 
find that simple! And you say that the effect is of 
the same nature as the cause! For my part, I say 
that the cause is spiritual, the effect material, and that 
therefore the proportion which you fondly assume, 1S 
as foreign to the physical instrument as to the religious 
instrument. 

But there is something more. It is true, my will 
moved the arm, which moved the lever: yet it can 
do nothing without the co-operation of the lever and 
the arm. If my will, however active it may be, had 
not these instruments at its service, it would have 
endeavoured in vain to communicate a movement. 
The force is in my will, and, nevertheless, the force 


can come from it only by means of an instrument 


Sacrament. 2A3 


which has it not; the living and first cause depends in— 
its action upon a cause inert in itself. Withdraw the 
lever, withdraw the piece of dead wood resting upon 
another piece of dead wood, let it refuse its help to 
the will, the will would waste itself in powerless desires. 
Spirit needs matter, as matter needs spirit : the miracle 
is reciprocal—the effect becomes cause, and the cause 
becomes effect. 

You have not, however, yet exhausted that strange 
complication of mysteries. If, whilst the will acts 
upon the instrument, the instrument were to double 
its length, its force at the same moment becomes 
doubled, without the soul making any other effort, 
and so on indefinitely, even to the power of raising 
worlds, according to the boast of Archimedes. The 
instrument which is not the principle of force 
multiplies it without measure: it receives the initiative 
of the mind, and gives back to it in exchange an 
increase which exhausts all calculation. Do you 
understand this? Do you understand that force, 
springing from the will, passes into a pole, and there 
increases simply because the pole increases in length. 
What relation is there between the immobility of the 
soul and the progress of force—between a principle 
which remains at the same point, and a consequence 


R 


244 Sacrament. 


unceasingly developed by the aid of something inert 
and dead? 

I leave you now free to declaim against the water 
of baptism ; ask, as often as you please, how a hittle 
‘matter applied to the brow of a man raises him from 
earth to God. If I know not, nature has prepared 
too many reprisals against science for me to distrust 
myself on this head. But I am not ignorant about 
it; I comprehend that force is essentially spiritual, 
that it resides in the omnipotent will of God, as in its 
first principle, and that from thence it descends upon 
every creature in order to communicate to 1t movement 
and life, according to fixed laws, and in a measure 
whence universal order results. I comprehend that 
the Spirit breathes where it wills, and how it wills, 
and that it is not more difficult for it to cause a saint 
to rise from a drop of water than a world from a word. 
I comprehend that under that action of the divine 
will, dust seeks dust, the plant rises from its germ, 
the animal devours and assimilates its prey to itself, 
the soul acts upon the body, the body upon the soul, 
the planet upon the planet, and that the entire 
universe, in its most lowly atoms, responds by a 
force to every hand that touches it, and asks help 


from it. God is all in all things, even in the hberty 


Sacrament. 245 


which rejects him, for that liberty is his work, and- 


he maintains it at the peril of the evil which it 
engenders inspite of him. Without liberty the world 
would be but a mechanism : liberty, a supreme 
power, gives to it in the being which possesses it 
selfpossession, government, responsibility, a real 
intercourse with God — an intercourse of which 
Prophecy and Sacrament are but the proof and 
the means. Prophecy reveals to the free man direct 
truth in regard to God, and inspires him with faith ; 
Sacrament pours into his soul the fermentation of 
charity, which no. image drawn from creation would 
be capable of raising up and maintaining therein 
‘The one and the other, however feeble they may be 
in appearance, form the foundation of the divine life 
in the bosom of mankind, and for sixty centuries they 
have there resisted the unanimous conjuration of 
created forces. All has been tried against them, but 
all in vain. ‘To the demonstrations of science, the 
brilliant dreams of genius, the sword of potentates, 
the judgments of the magistracy, the revolts of 
opinion, the children of faith and charity have replied 
in these short phrases :—God has spoken to us! God 
has blessed us! Death has found them firm upon 


these two anchors, and their blood has been but 


~~ 


ge 
‘246 a Sacrament. 


another prophecy and sacrament. The world mocked 
at the word and at water; they added their blood, 
and proved to the world that a fluid shed was not 
so insignificant a thing. Language is air put in 
motion ; but when the soul enters into it, it becomes 
eloquence, justice, truth. What will it become when 
God enters into it? Water is hydrogen mixed with 
oxygen: but when the genius of man penetrates it, 
it becomes vapour, celerity, commerce, power, civili- 
zation. What will it become when God touches it ? 
Glory to God, who has remained so great in suclz 
feeble means ! 

Gentlemen, I have yet to show you how prophetic 
and sacramental grace, how supernatural truth and 
charity were given to the ancestor of all our race: 
but the order of our Conferences now. arrests me 
for a year. We will resume them next year by this 
question, and immediately after, having learned the 
whole plan of man in regard to God, having scrutinized 
the gifts which were granted to him by the intermediary 
of nature, and the highest and most direct gifts which 
he has received from grace, we will halt before that 
splendid masterpiece of divine goodness, no longer to 
study that divine goodness in its gifts but in its acts. 


We shall see man struggling with liberty—a depositary 


* 
Sacrament, | 247 


bs 
in liberty of his own destiny and of the destiny of all 
his descendants—master to lose all, master to bless 
all; in fine, conducting in his heart the pious and 
terrible drama of our common destiny. There, under 
the virgin shades of the primitive Eden, I give you 
rendezvous. ‘There, in the ignorance of evil, and in 
the all-youthful glory of God, we shall find our first 
father ; and we, his sons, who too fully prejudge 
by our misfortunes the possible issue of so much. 
innocence in so much felicity, let us each return to 
our works, and may we, in another year, be able to 
bring back into this place less of remorse than 
remembrance, fewer faults than virtues, a soul capable 
of understanding the fall of man, and worthy to 


repair it ! 


SLE ND: 


LONDON: 
STEVENS AND RICHARDSON, PRINTERS, 5, GREAT QUEEN STREET, 
LINCOLN’S-INN-FIELDS. 


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